Full Circle
by Skitts
Summary: When, you thought about it, it all started off with Marla. It slowly revolved round to Axel, then to Rikku then Roxas. And then to Kairi next was Sora and Riku. Sora shifted it to Belle who passed it to Meg. Soon, it was Marla's again. akuroku RSK zemyx
1. prologue

**Author/s:** Skitts und Lamatikah –two fingered salute-

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:SoKai Rikux?:.

**Disclaimer:** If I said I owned Kingdom Hearts, would you really believe me? But, if I said I owned Kingdom _of_ Hearts… that would be something else… -shufty eyes- Does anyone, anyone at all, know what I'm talking about?

* * *

F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_**--**Prologue**—**_

**_x_-Fam_i_ly R_eu_n_i_on-_x_**

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

_Family reunions were always messy affairs. Yes, messy affairs indeed which usually ended with several drunk guys in their thirties who still thought they could break dance… even though they couldn't, a food fight, and a whole load of ambulances arriving… But there was always one thing that happened, which no one could laugh at or poke fun at in any way. It included two families, three kids, four adults and a whole load of crying/shouting. Method?_

_Family Reunion._

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"Smile for the camera, Roxie!" screamed a voice several inches from his ear. A smell of highly expensive perfume accompanied these words, swarming around in his nose like a beehive.

In family reunions it was common practise for all the ladies to bathe in rosewater before the grand ceremony (yes, these family relationships were so important they were frequently referred to as grand _ceremonies_, like knighthood but possibly more important). And after bathing in cheap rosewater they fell into vats of expensive perfume that wasted about a whole months' worth of salary and squeezed into their best formal party-wear, even if their best outfit was from their wedding which was several years ago. With hair piled on their heads like spaceships and smelling strongly of decaying roses all the women in their 'lovely' outfits were the bells of the ball. Or just things to snigger and point at a little bit, like outbreaks of the plague.

Not that the plague was a laughing matter of course – it was probably rather serious when it actually happened.

Roxas allowed himself to be yanked into view of the camera held by Auntie Maleficent who was deemed thoroughly too ugly to be in any family pictures as she would ruin them. Of course, they never told her that she couldn't be in the pictures because her favourite hat (a set of antler horns) was blocking half of Jafar's head. They told her she was simply the best photographer there and that, even though she tried to pluck her eyebrows herself, they looked very … interesting…

The boy giggled as aunt Maleficent's horns bobbed around, lips pursed as she attempted to set the camera 'to the right setting'. So, really, she wasn't good at photography either – which explained why all the photos in the family album looked orange and slightly sinister.

"But, wait!" cried one of Roxas' many, many uncles, simply known as 'The Mayor'. He probably had a name like Olette or something, but they forgot it. If anybody addressed him as anything other than 'the Mayor' or occasionally 'the Mayor of Halloween Town' his head spookily seemed to spin around and change colour. Roxas had never pondered how weird his family members were before, and just took in his stride…

The Mayor was small, very small. Unlike Jack who was tall, very tall. To make up for being small (very small) the Mayor wore a hat that was tall (very tall).

"We can't take the family photo unless all the family members are here!" A murmur of agreement whispered throughout the room, as the families began to disperse once more and wait for the missing arrivals.

Roxas always loved family reunions because he could see all his odd family members, and talk to them, and hear their funny voices. But his favourite aunt and uncle weren't here yet… He wandered round, wondering when they'd arrive. Flashes followed him as people took pictures anyway. He smiled at every single one flash as he loved the light so much. It was bright, but it didn't hurt his eyes, not one bit.

A sudden blast of cold wind smacked him in the face as the doors flew open. Roxas shielded his poor, cold face from the wind. One of his more odd looking uncle/cousin/second cousin/third cousin/whatever moved in front of the door and closed it with a dramatic 'BANG'.

"And thus, the draught was sorted, simply and effectively." He informed the millions. Not that there were really millions… that would be silly. More like, 'the thousands'.

As Oogie Boogie swaggered off to continue his pretty exciting game of roulette with Jack, the doors flew open yet again, pinning him in a rather humorous way against the wall. Due to the laws of our good friend Physics, he _should_ have been at most the weight of a leaf.

"Oogie!" cried a small, shrieking voice as he ran up to the very shocked relative. The kid obviously liked 'Oogie', maybe because the guy gave the kid bugs for all his Christmases and Birthdays… Mainly because of that, yeah.

"Sora! Get back here, now!" Sora retreated carefully back to his parents as Oogie regained all 'swagger-like-ness', and swaggered back off to Jack.

"Yay! Now we can do the pictures!" cried a little voice in the corner, the embodiment of cutsiness-ness and innocence. Roxas was a sweet kid, everybody knew that, what with his little button nose and blue eyes. He was the one Maleficent liked to go up to and the one who got his cheeks pinched the most. Maleficent didn't even mind if he pulled her horns and claimed they were 'silly', although her horns were a very touchy subject. She loved those antlers. Gaston had given them to her. Mostly because she was too blind to realise the label said 'made in Taiwan, 100 plastic'.

Who'd really want plastic antlers anyway?

Well, giant inflatable Santas were odd too, but people still bought those… Well, that was Maleficent's next Christmas present sorted out. A hat with a giant inflatable Santa perched on it, large enough to crush her.

Roxas ran over to the front of said woman's 'camera area' and stood at the front where he had been before. Except now… Sora seemed to have decided to plonk his backside in his place. Roxas gulped, but he wasn't going to let this ruin his reunion. Even though, Roxas being five, he spelt it 'ruinun'.

He thought for a moment and then realised that it would 'be silly to sit there because it would look better if Sora sat there, so I can sit _next_ to Sora!'

His logic worked. According to Roxas.

The blond sat down beside his cousin.

"Hello, Sora."

Sora looked up, and smiled, "Hello Roxie!" Sora was lovable too, he was too hyper for his own good, and liked human warmth. This meant lots of cuddles. Sora was really more like a big duvet that shrouded everyone in a very happy, and very 'Care-bear' like blanket of love. Corny as it may sound. It was very true. Just as true as how his hair defied all laws of gravity when it stood up from his scalp. Once again we link back to our good friend Physics, who all though _our _good friend, was obviously not Sora's, with the way the boy's hair was like that.

"You good?" Sora nodded, a little sheepishly. He turned away. "Sora?" Sora bit his lip, and scratched the back of his head. "Sora…?"

Sora's head flipped round to face Roxas, as he shifted it about a bit. "Can you keep a secret, Roxie?" Roxas nodded slowly. Sora began again, "My daddy says that … that I shouldn't talk to you or Marly…" Roxas's eyes widened, "I'm sorry Roxie…"

"Was it my fault, Sora? Because of that time I told you to put your head down the toilet? I'msorrysorrysorry, I won't do it again! I _promiiiise_!" Sora shrugged and hugged his cousin.

"I don't fink so…" Roxas pondered. What on earth could ever make his favourite Uncle not want him to talk to Sora…?

Roxas thought the man was great! He had killed lots of wild animals, so he was definitely a good man… But, what could Roxas have done to make him not like him?

Suddenly there was a flash.

'_Look at me… I look so stupid. See, I was so confused. And Sora was really upset. I know, hard to believe, he was my only cousin… It seems so long ago now… Like it was a different world or something…_'

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

All families try to be perfect – it doesn't matter if Uncle Oogie Boogie has a gambling disorder or if Aunt Ursula had an odd laugh. No, let me rephrase that: a _very_ odd laugh.

They were trying to work out all their problems and smiled and were kind and polite. They didn't comment on Maleficent's plastic antlers or her excessive amount of scary makeup which once sent Sora running from the room screaming and in hysterics about 'some evil witch lady come to smuggle my heart away under the cover of darkness. With her husband, PETE!'

They were trying very hard to be a perfect family.

But Sora's parents… They were a completely different kettle of fish.

Sora's parents believed they were above everybody else because they weren't trying to be perfect – they _were_ perfect. The dream family, like the sickening ones on TV that resolve all their problems with a church, a bible and a load of love. Sora always ate his greens and went to bed on time and behaved very well with other children and didn't pull the little girls' hair. He got along well with his friends (Who happened to all be boys). He didn't have pink hair and didn't wear his mother's stiletto heels and he didn't pull at Aunt Maleficent's horns.

Even though Belle was tied down to a load of freaks through her sister, Meg, her husband, Gaston, had a nice respectable family. His family members didn't run around claiming to be 'the Mayor of Halloween Town' and didn't wear ludicrous hats. It was Gaston's family they chose to visit the most of, although Belle did worry about the little hellions Meg was raising. She had to keep going back, just to check her sister's head hadn't exploded from all the stress.

Belle knew Meg was wishing she had a perfect family like her. But, Belle's greatest wish was to rub it in her face; Meg had always been the one the boys liked, with her good looks, and flawless figure. Even though she knew her sister had had a hard love life, the woman was with some hunk now so what did it matter if she trampled her spirits a bit? Not much, right?

It made Belle feel good. It's alright. As long as neither Sora nor Gaston were harmed, then everything would be okay.

"Meg…" said Belle in her most formal voice, walking towards the table at the back where all the snacks were laid out. It was obvious Jack and Sally had done all the preparing of the meals – everything was covered in mounds of black gunge and the family reunion cake was shaped like a coffin, with dripping red writing. Belle smiled kindly and mumbled: 'Lovely', shuddering as she said it to prove she thought it was the exact opposite of 'lovely'. What wouldn't she give to be with Gaston's family? Her Sora would be getting bad ideas from that little Roxas child too…

Meg turned round, her face glowing, as she stood next to her husband who had just told some hilarious joke. "Oh Belle! How long has it been? I missed you, how are you?" Belle smiled. Small talk was all her sister was and had ever been made of. "And little Sora?" Belle could see the smile fade from Meg's face as Belle's did too.

"Well, Meg, I'm afraid _little_ Sora has been having a few nightmares, from the last time _little _Sora met up with Roxas. Under-the-bed-monsters?"

Meg winced. "Well… it was really because of The Mayor's present… he gave Roxas that book… you know…"

Belle frowned, "Oh, don't start blaming relatives, you know who's fault that was. And onto other matters, you might want to have a word with Roxas about toilets. They are not for sticking Sora's head into. Even if it is a 'cool' thing to do. Sora had a cold, and it was made worse with that little incident."

Meg looked down, "Well… Well, I'm sorry about that… but… you know… boys will be boys, you kn-"

"Well, I don't think that Marluxia boy falls into that column anymore. Do you?"

"What are you trying to say about my son, Belle?" shrieked Meg.

Belle smirked, she could really get Meg with the whole Marluxia business. Meg was really affected by it, seeing that the kid was a bastard child, from some hazy night as a sixteen year old girl getting drunk for the first time. "I'm trying to say _Meg_," Belle replied in a knowing voice, stressing each consonant in Meg's name, "That your son, is not of the normal type of 'son', shall we say?"

Meg flipped. "I love my son, even if you don't love him, and there's nothing you can do about it!"

"I'm sorry Meg, I just thought you might need reawakening to the real world… Oh yes, and what about Roxas: how many friends does he have? Oh yes, one, and who is that friend of his? A girl. And according to Sora, Roxas thinks that all the boys in his class are 'stupid and just play with action men all the time'."

Meg blinked. She grabbed her drink and threw it over Belle.

"Herc, get Roxie, we're going. I can't- I won't- I don't know what to say…" She muttered as she walked past her sister. Some sister…

_They tried to perfect – they tried so damned hard to be perfect._

_Belle didn't try because she already was 'perfect'. She didn't feel the need to get along with the little people, she didn't want to 'fit in'. She always wanted to stand out, to be better._

_The family was held together with glue. If one person stopped trying everything would come unstuck._

_Meg knew that the one person who stopped trying could easily be Belle, because she never really started in the first place._

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

**A/N: **_Heh. The actual story is not when Roxas and Sora are five and Marluxia being fifteen (because that is how old he is… in this prologue)… Anyways, we were wondering, if you wanted to pair anyone with Marluxia…? Yaoi pairings are preferable… as it would fit with the plot… Heh heh… So, you can say, whoever the hell you want, as long as it fits… … _

_So like, not anyone from the summary… or Rikku or Naminé, and anyway, they wouldn't make it yaoi... But, like, not Riku either… because we have him all planned out… -maniacal laughter-_

_Anyways, three for an update! YAYness!! (reviews that is…)_


	2. C1: sweet like honey

**Author/s:** Skitts und Lamatikah –two fingered salute-

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.

**Disclaimer:** If I said I owned Kingdom Hearts, would you really believe me? But, if I said I owned Kingdom _of_ Hearts… that would be something else… -shufty eyes- Does anyone, anyone at all, know what I'm talking about?

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F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_**--**Chapter **1—**_

**_x_-Sw_eet_ L_i_k_e_ Ho_n_e_y_-_x_**

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"Hello and welcome to _hell_. Please take a few moments to kiss goodbye to any hope of having a normal life. If you care to turn your head, your eyes will be met with a very_ charming_ view of your sanity. Look at, running away... Down the road, over the bridge, and past the state border! Not that the state border is _actually_ over the bridge. Just a load of shrubbery, but I guess our sanity could be hiding in the bushes."

"Rikku. Your sanity ran for cover in the bushes years ago. If it was even ever there to begin with and you were born with the amazing gift of an empty head," scowled Roxas, looking around the scenery Rikku described. Somewhere amidst the 'wonderful scenery', he thought he could see a little blonde head bobbing up and down, or maybe not. Truth be told, he couldn't find these bushes she was mentioning, nor the bridge, nor the state border, nor his sanity, running away. And... Wait... Destiny Islands was an ISLAND! How could it have a 'state border'? It probably could, Roxas just couldn't be bothered to find it...

"Oh poo you, Roxas! I'm sure you're just upset because we have to live here!" Rikku told him knowledgeably, giving him an affectionate pinch on the cheek. Roxas scowled.

"A year, Rikku! A YEAR! A DAMNED YEAR!"

"Roxas, no swearing in front of Naminé, thank you very much!" came a mature voice from somewhere near the car. Roxas pouted, his arms crossed, wondering why they had moved in the first place. Destiny Islands sounded like something out of some crappy video game. I mean, who named their home town 'Destiny Islands'. Heh. Imagine if there was a place called 'Twilight Town', now that would be funny! Roxas mentally snorted and carried on his merry little emo way to the door, as Rikku skipped along beside him.

"Rikku. You are annoying me. Go away." Rikku swatted Roxas over the head, and pouted. Her hair stopped bouncing as she stopped skipping, and Roxas noted that despite the cold she still wore her shorts and tank top. It annoyed him like hell. "And you're making me feel cold."

"You make me feel cold, Roxas. You're really depressing you know... And plus, a year is a BIG difference, I'm sure!" Rikku regained her bounciness and skipped off, probably to annoy some other poor soul.

"Come on Roxie, cheer up, we'll have lots of fun here, I'm sure!" Roxas turned to glare at his mother. _This is your fault. I hate you._ Oh, if looks could kill he'd be the Grim Reaper. "Oh, don't look at me like that; I'm positive you'll absolutely _love_ it here! Positive, kay?" She hoisted Roxas' younger 'sister' further up, as the girl was slipping from her grip, "And don't worry about school, I know you think you won't like it because Sora's there and- oops..."

"SORA'S THERE?!?" Roxas exploded his face the perfect picture of violence and hatred. Whenever Roxas exploded it was always a rather disturbing and sometimes violent affair. This time his explosion made his father hit his head on the car boot, where all their luggage was being kept. All the furniture had been delivered by some big trucks, Rikku had wanted to travel with the truck-guys but Meg wouldn't hear of it. Rikku had gone off in a sulk; however, she was happy again after approximately two minutes and forty-seven seconds.

"Hey, hey, hey! Look, I don't think he'll give you any grief, remember, you were the best friends when you were younger! Now, please try for me Roxie, okay... and... Wonder Boy? You seen Mindy?"

"Damn... Roxas, go look for Mindy will you; I'm sure she hasn't gone far..."

Hah.

'I'm sure Mindy hasn't gone too far' was funnier than anything any qualified comedian could ever say. Meg and 'Wonderboy' just didn't know Mindy. Even though she was always pouting and sulking and was just plain boring, hovering around in her pits of doom and dragging everybody else down with her, she could run like hell. Seriously, even though she always seemed lazy and unmotivated, any time the idea of toddling off popped into her head she grew _wheels_. It was only logical way to describe it.

Roxas sighed in defeat and stalked off after his 'sister'. He seemed to have been gaining a lot of sisters recently... And now he had another crazy person in the family, one who liked to listen to voices in her head that told her she had walk off and try to find some imaginary sisters she had about one a month, just to keep everybody on their toes. And it wasn't like they didn't have enough weirdo relatives as it was. Mindy was just icing the cake. She was obsessed, _obsessed_, **_obsessed_** dammit!

After about an hour of searching Roxas was sure that he not only knew how to find numerous places around the island, but he also knew who to hate as soon as he got to school. These people included an awful lot of boys. And a few girls. Because the girls were probably down the beach, 'sunning', and the ones hanging about on the streets were the ones as bad as the boys.

_That was what Selphie did all the time anyway..._

After about another two hours, Roxas called it quits and decided that if they lost Mindy, they lost Mindy. She was only twelve and didn't talk much anyway... except to her 'shoulder angels'. The psychiatrist told them that there was nothing (much) to worry about and she'd soon (in his own words) 'phase out of this phase, hahahahaha, if you'll, ahem, excuse the pun'.

Roxas hadn't found it funny in the slightest. And that had been three years ago, and the shoulder angels were still there, and she was still out searching for those 'sisters' of hers. He thought he may have to shrug his guilt off. But the guilt didn't come. All those years of negligence and always needing to be better than someone else had turned Roxas into an uncaring emo.

Roxas could have cried. But uncaring emos don't cry. So he didn't.

As he made his way through the door he noticed that the family were sitting at the table, and he also noticed that there was one more blonde than he would have first thought there to be.

"Oh, so she's back, and you have food as soon as she coming prancing in through the door, not bothering to call me so I can end the wild goose chase, you just leave me to go around by myself, looking for that stupid girl who has no idea where she is or where she's going EVER! I HATE YOU!" Roxas glanced round the table of seemingly happy people, until his eyes rested on the brunet/auburn mother he had, who was staring blankly ahead, obviously under shell-shock from her son's outburst. "Especially you…" Roxas hissed. Meg gulped, and turned to face Naminé again.

The look on Naminé face was unreadable, as it was most of the time. She was a close book that couldn't be prised open no matter how much force you used, and just seemed to ride life as it came, like a wave. She was … apathetic about most things in life, really. It didn't bother her – after a hard day she could always lock herself up in her room and draw. That never changed.

"I try, Roxie..." she was inaudible as Roxas tromped upstairs, not caring where he went or what he did. Naminé frowned and turned to look back down at her food, not talking as usual.

Roxas flopped onto what he presumed was his bed, after ten minutes of searching through the rooms, before finding out he shared a room with Naminé. He sighed and rolled over onto his back. He knew this was just the start. It was this damned place. It wasn't good for him. Even that Twilight Town sounded better than this dump. And he wasn't sure if Twilight Town even existed.

He sincerely hoped he wasn't going to go soft in the head like the Mayor and start proclaiming he was 'the lord of Twilight Town'.

He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down all the things that were wrong in his life. According to Selphie, if you wrote down all the bad things you know about and all your worries on a piece of paper, then put it under your pillow when you go to sleep, you'll forget about them in the morning.

On Roxas' paper, it read:

_1 .I hate my family; they're all trying to annoy me __  
__2. Rikku is annoying __  
__3. I'm going to Sora's school __  
__4. Mindy keeps running away __  
__5. I have no longer any brothers... even though I hardly had one to start off with.__  
__6. Mom says she's thinking of adopting someone else.__  
__7. There is a Family Reunion in two months.__  
__8. I don't think I'm going to make any friends who are boys here either; I'll let everyone down again.__  
__9. All the kids here are stupid and I hate them already.__  
__10. Mom doesn't care about me._

Roxas tucked it beneath his pillow and sat up. He looked around the room, inspecting every corner he could from his position on the bed. The room looked bigger than his old one. Before they had moved to Destiny Islands, they had lived in Olympus, and Roxas only hoped that these islands would be just as hot as his old home or else he'd have an even harder job of fitting in if in the summer he wore scarves.

And from what he had seen so far, he wasn't happy; the sea always made places which could have been warm cold. Well, that was his theory anyways. Whether it was true or not he did not know, maybe he was just being paranoid. Maybe, he had been cold because he was numb with 'excitement' or something like that...

Boy, life sucked.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

When Roxas woke up, he awoke to find he had a piece of paper stuck to the side of his head, encrusted with his own drool. The drool was obviously acting as a glue to keep the sheet stuck to the side of his face.

He yawned and pulled a face, ripping the piece of paper off his face.

After such a long rest he had honestly forgotten what he had written, yet when he scanned over his writing it all came back to him. _Oh yeah. This is my list of all the things in life I hate … And I was meant to forget about this when I woke up… Which I did… Until I found it plastered to my face._

Roxas growled, crumpled up the hateful lined sheet of paper and threw it across the room.

With his problems now fresh and nicely imprinted once more in his mind, he padded downstairs to get some breakfast. The alarm clock in his stomach was ringing, signifying his brain that it was most defiantly 'food o' clock'.

"Hello, honey," smiled Meg as soon as the dishevelled boy entered the room, her voice as sweet as the food product she mentioned. Roxas kept the expression on his face sour, like gone off milk, and took a seat next to Mindy. The blonde paid no heed to her brother, and continued in her antics of drizzling honey all over her very sticky toast. Roxas frowned, wondering exactly what was 'with' honey today – although Mindy had always had an obsession about bees.

He scanned all the faces around the kitchen table, and make a quick analysis of each of his 'family' members. He didn't like what he saw, and what he saw was:

Mindy: A weird girl in pyjamas with bees all over them. Get out the sick bucket, if she takes one bite out of honey-and-toast concoction she's gonna hurl he insides up onto the kitchen floor. Isn't saying anything: has that look in her eye that signifies her shoulder angels are telling her to burn stuff (good lord not _again_).

Rikku: Another weird girl fully dressed in her 'casual' attire – the orange tank top and frilly green shorts. Is talking loudly with her mouth full about some funny anecdote she heard on the radio, and keeps laughing. She's going to choke on her cereal and then she'll be sorry she's such a loud-mouth.

Meg: I dislike her, moving on…

Naminé: Another blonde! Argh! What does Meg have with adopting blondes? Does she think blondes are 'perfect' because they're always the ones fashion magazines babble on about? Well, if she's so vain just to pay attention to hair colour that would explain why she adopted so many weirdoes. A woman who wants a perfect family system based on hair colour … God … Wait a second, **I** have blond hair. Arrrggghhhhh.

Hercules alias 'Wonder Boy': A jerk. Who has stupid muscles. And stupid hair. And a stupid smile. And that is all.

Marluxia: …

Roxas sighed, and took a vicious bite out of something he'd randomly picked up off the table. He wasn't exactly sure what it _was_, but his 'family' were starting to look at him like he five heads. They'd probably realised he was creating an 'advanced' thesis on each of them, and the intense look he wore on his face was freaking them out. Well, _they_ freaked him out, all the time. He took another huge bite out of the thing in his hand, which was later revealed to be a pancake, to cover up for the fact that he was thinking too hard for so early in the morning.

"You know, Roxas," said Meg in an almost conversational tone, as she babied over Naminé like she was disabled and unable to cut up her own toast. Roxas frowned, and felt something constrict in his chest, as she fussed over the child who wasn't even her flesh-and-blood daughter. The boy knew that somewhere, deep down, Meg did care about him and had, once upon a time, fussed over him like that. He felt a little left out, although they both knew that he would only scowl and slap her arms away if she tried to cut up his own toast now. It would be _embarrassing._ "Roxie, please don't scowl like that, the wind will turn and your face will be stuck like that forever and then life will suck. Roxas, couldn't you at least try to be a little _happier?_ I know it's difficult for you … Hell, it's difficult for me too … And all of us … But it'll be a fresh start, a new chance! You can make more friends and I'm sure you'll fit in just fine…"

Roxas cast his mind back to the day before, when he had been on a mad track after Mindy when she had pulled another one of her magical disappearing acts, which proved to be not so magical after all.

He had seen all the kids on the streets, and he wasn't exactly falling over himself for a chance to skip up to them and be all 'hey can we be friends?' They were all arranged in the streets in gangs of three and four, shooting him nasty looks when he walked past like he had malaria.

Sure, he was going to fit in _just fine…_

"Roxas is being silly," said Rikku in a matter-of-fact voice, wiping her hands covered in the remains of her breakfast on her top. The orange fabric was now stained with chocolaty finger-prints, but it still looked _good_. It was like a pretty pattern, and Roxas mentally cursed the fact that Rikku always looked good. She ran around so much and was constantly on some crazy sugar-high and had a rather disturbing obsession with the old family car and liked to poke about at the exhaust pipe and yet she _always looked good._ If she knew how long it took him to do his hair in the morning … Damn … He was going soft in the head. He was taking after his 'brother'.

"I'm gonna go out there right now," said Rikku, acting the perfect fuckin' sun-beam. "And march up to people and _demand_ that they be my friend!"

That was another thing about Rikku Roxas despised. She was so _confident_, mostly because she was so crazy and hyped-up on E-numbers she saw the world differently to everybody else. And the weird thing was, people were attracted to her, like a magnet. People wanted to be her friend because she was bit of comic relief. Roxas would never admit it, but he _envied_ her.

She was always Miss Popular back then.

She was going to regain her title at this school.

And Roxas didn't see that things were going to be much different for him, either.

Different faces, different places.

Same story.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"_Yo, Roxas! How's it all going?" _Roxas sighed, as his best... scratch that – _only_ friend, piped up from the other end of the line, trying to act 'cool' and 'hip' as she presumed Roxas would be in this new school. "_Oh, I could never match up to how cool you probably are right now... I'm just a sad loser... always will be, I guess! Oh well, Roxie, at least I can still think about the boyfriend I'll never have, the girlfriends I'll hang about in the mall next never and the best friend I lost to some romantic-sounding-named island, right?_"

"SELPH! I'm always gunna be your best friend. Anyway, I doubt I'll make any friends here, seriously, all the guys here are so _mnyeh_!"

"_'Mnyeh'? ... 'Mnyeh'? Geez... I thought they'd be all cool and... you know... cool... living on a cool romantic sounding island like that... Well, at least I know you're still my best friend, Roxie!_" There was a mumbling in the background as Roxas could hear a few mumblings, a crash and then a deep sigh from Selphie. "_Yes, I'll call the ambulance, mom... Sorry Rox, I have to go, Zidane tripped over the vase again... Love youuuuu-"_

Selphie was cut off abruptly, probably by her mother who was trying to deal with a bleeding son and a broken vase. Roxas sure missed Selphie; she was his only friend, and already, after about a day, he was already ready to run away. With a sandwich or two, of course.

And maybe some cheese... or pepperoni... or PIZZA!

Not that Roxas particularly enjoyed pizza, it's just that when ever he was upset or pissed off he knew he could always go to Selphie's house and... oh yeah... not anymore he couldn't...

Not Roxas really was upset.

"Oh Roxieeeee! Roxas, dear, get in the car, we're going to go and see your new school!" called a happy voice from the car. Roxas's breathing suddenly turned raspy and heavy. How could _she_ tell him where to go, and what to do? She was a failure. A stupid failure. And... oh dear God... what would Sora say...? What has Sora already been saying about his freaked up cousin, and his freaked-up cousin's brother who's only friend was a girl and who was embarrassed his family, and stuck people's heads in toilets...

"I'm not comin-" He was cut off by a firm hand covering his mouth and hauling him into the car.

"Oh yes you are, Roxas!" cried out his father. Roxas scowled. Damn fathers. Damn it all. Damn _them_ all. And where the hell was Mindy?

About three hours later, the whole family, having now found Mindy, were parked outside of the new school. Roxas decided that he wouldn't drive to school every day. He'd walk. He felt as much as a part of that family as a lion would feel in a duck's.

As the troupe gathered into the building, Roxas noticed that the school held elementary, middle school _and _high school. Roxas gulped. What ... joy... The whole family... excluding parents and older sibling... would be in the school with him.

Maybe they would make him look cool, like Rikku could give him high fives everytime she passed him, and he could give Naminé piggy-backs, and they'd all get let off when Mindy went missing... Yeah... it _could_ be cool like that, but this was Roxas's solution to 'uncoolness' to each of these:

**High-fiving Rikku:** High-fiving Rikku usually caused a whole crowd of kids to watch and stare as two blonde's tried tackling each other and failing miserably as they just slapped each other's faces. One blonde would travel one way, laughing with all her new friends. The other would travel the other way, scowling, and blushing, pondering more ways to kill himself.

**Piggy-backing Naminé:** She's too heavy, dammit. The end.

**Getting let off school to find Mindy:** Oh my God! Your sister runs away from you all the time? What a freaky family!

Yeah, don't do all that stuff, under pain of death. Social death, that is.

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

**A/N: **_I'm not being desperate._

_-holds up sign saying 'rIvuuue or iLL shuot yoo'-_

_Translation: Eat food. Not plastic. On second thought. Eat plastic. Not dogs._

_Anyways, review. PLEASSSSSSSSSE!! Seriously, if you read it then you HAVE to review because then you'll get more AkuRoku stuff quicker... and I also changed the summary because it's what happens... and it was always what was going to happen... but I'm silly like that..._

_Skitts: What the hell? ... I think she just took over again..._

_Shut up, you!_

_Now, any bright ideas on who to pair Marluxia with... any at all.., If you don't, then we'll just have to pair him up with... DUMBLYDORE!_


	3. C2:freaky family

**Author/s:** Skitts et Lamatikah –two fingered salute-

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.

**Disclaimer:** If I said I owned Kingdom Hearts, would you really believe me? But, if I said I owned Kingdom _of_ Hearts… that would be something else… -shufty eyes- Does anyone, anyone at all, know what I'm talking about?

* * *

F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_**--**Chapter **2—**_

**_x_-_Fr_e_ak_y_ F_a_m_il_y_-_x_**

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Sora had been very excited that morning. Some people thought it was because he was always happy. Others thought it was because he was an attention seeker. But everyone else knew that it was because there were going to be four new students who'd be joining the school.

Some of the big tall people with red hair and eyeliner (to be precise) were looking forward to the new kids coming so they could bash them around... or find any cute girls.

Other students, also with red hair and eyeliner (to be _very_ precise) just wanted to find a new friend amongst the rabble that would be coming to the school.

Other students just didn't care at all and were just trying to get their stupid little best friend to, "Calm DOWN, Sora!"

Sora sank back into his chair. His grin didn't fade in the tiniest though – he was thoroughly content with life, the universe, and all other things his Physics teacher tried to tell him that he didn't understand.

Maybe it was the pancakes he'd had for breakfast, maybe it was the LOVE in the air (Inanimate Physics teacher in Background: "What love? All I see is BLAH BLAH BLAH!" Riku: "Where the hell did you come from?") or maybe it was the fact Sora had been sniffing glue before school, which he hadn't anyway.

As the physics teacher 'blah'ed on about some soap that could kill you... or something along those lines, a knock could be heard at the door. At this moment, the soap dropped from the teacher's thoroughly gloved hand and fell onto the front row boff's head and then bounced off their head and onto the floor.

As the headteacher, and six other people along with him trundled into the classroom, the first thing they saw was a girl running round in little circles screaming bloody murder with a silver haired kid at the back laughing, and his friend beside him was giggling a little nervously as he watched the girl clutch her head.

And... wait... wasn't that...

"Sora...?" Sora turned at the sound of his name, and his eyes brightened as he saw his cousin. He grinned, rushing up to his dear cousin and hugging him. Roxas grimaced. He guessed Sora wasn't the most popular kid at school with his personality and touchy-feely nature.

As the kid Sora had been next to watched Sora's friendly nature depart from him onto this other boy he didn't know, his eyes narrowed.

Roxas bit his lip, "Sora... Sora, get off, everyone's looking..." he whispered. Sora looked up and grinned. He rubbed the top of Roxas's hair with his knuckles.

"Don't worry, Roxie! They won't get jealous! And if they do, then I'll give them a hug after!" Roxas blinked. That wasn't exactly what he had meant, but if that's what Sora said he meant, that's what he _must_ have meant.

"Yes... Sora... Yes..." he muttered, blushing slightly from Sora's death-like hug. That boy was still glaring at him, and it was starting to scare Roxas somewhat. Like that time when Rikku went parading round in just a towel and a Spiderman mask when Meg had stupidly let her go to the cinema with _far_ too much munny for candy.

"Follow me, Roxas!" cried Sora.

"Erm... Sora... I'm walking round the school, I'm not meant to go in the lessons..." Sora ignored his cousin's pleas and instead kept on carrying him off to meet the kid who was ... still giving Roxas the evils. Roxas turned round and curved his mouth to form a clear 'help me' shape.

Rikku paid no attention however and hollered back at him, "Go, Roxie! You made friends!"

Rikku didn't know Sora since his family hadn't gone to another family reunion ever since that one day; they had left shortly after Meg had.

Roxas shook his head and instead tried to catch his parent's attention. However, these two were too preoccupied watching the girl who was now screaming in agony writhe and squirm over the floor.

He spluttered in protest, but instead got pulled to sit down next to... that boy... And by then, Roxas knew that all the kids in the room had grown tired of watching their peer 'die' and had their eyes fixed onto Sora and this new kid.

Roxas sat in the seat that had been pushed beneath him and tapped his fingers carefully, his eyes shifting nervously around the room.

"Roxie, this is Riku, and Riku, this is Roxie!" squealed Sora happily.

As Riku glared at Roxas some more, Roxas could hear his mother shouting his name as the background noise of an ambulance could be heard. He jumped up and ran after it. Sora merely shrugged and sat back down next to Riku.

As he laid back in the stool, clinging onto the rungs on the legs, he stared blankly ahead.

"Sora, who was that?" asked Riku, slowly and carefully.

"That was my crazy cousin, Roxie. My mum and dad don't like his family so I haven't seen him for _ageeeeeeeees_ and now he's here. Heh, he's got a big family now. I remember my mummy saying that they were stupid and the family was a big disgrace and that I should never talk to Roxie ever again or he'll stick my head down a toilet again, but I told her that when he did that it was fun!" Sora mumbled as the ambulance troop took away the girl who had now probably passed out from the pain, the class were asked who her closest friend was and Sora stood up to go with Kairi.

Riku didn't notice this however and instead carried on thinking about Sora hugging Roxas. "Incest..." he muttered under his breath. Then, noticing Sora had gone he slammed his fist on the table, "Damn you, Kairi..."

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"Of course, our school is the _best_," said the headmaster/bus driver (budget cut), Cid. The old man turned to usher the group of people into the nearest classroom he saw. Turning around to salute the happy ambulance people who were romping down the corridor, he sighed with relief - they hadn't seen that. Though their school was the _best_, it had a high teenage mortality. Well, that was the sixth kid that week, and it was Monday. The kid was all wrapped up like a pizza on a stretcher, to be delivered to the friendly local hospital that was conveniently located next to the school. Nobody needed to know about that, though.

"Woah... This sure is a classy ... class-room... Heh... Forgive the pun..." said Hercules, laughing, LAUGHING LIKE A FOOL! Well, he was a fool. How convenient, how fitting, how touché, as it were.

All the kids assembled around random tables turned to look at the big freak and his big family.

"Well," said Cid, clearing his throat and sounding oddly like a bullfrog. "This would be the Technology room – Tech 4. Today the 10th grade class are making ..." Cid bent down to examine a pile of wood and nails sat on one kid's desk. The kid was a rather short girl with dark hair, and she was giggling as she pointed at her 'unique' take on making a shelf.

"It seems like the tenth grade class are making lovely ... er ... birdbaths..."

"That's a _shelf_, Cid."

Rikku giggled as she flipped her blonde hair over one shoulder and skipped over towards the girl who had corrected Cid, the one whose table looked like a bomb site and made the shelf that looked like a birdbath.

All the boys were watching her.

"And, class, this is Rikku..." said Cid, producing a piece of paper from his pocket. Hercules had given him all the details of his family, their ages and whatnot, but now Cid was finding it very hard to read the paper. It wasn't even paper – Hercules had written the details on a piece of toilet roll in green wax crayon. "This is Rikku ... Ha- He- Ho- I'm sorry, I can't read this terrible childish writing."

Hercules hung his head in shame and Meg gave him a quick smile.

"Please excuse my gormless husband. He went to one of them special sports schools with people with basketballs for brains."

"Hello!" trilled Rikku brightly, as the dark-haired girl on the other side of the tech table smiled at her. The girl had a chisel, a chainsaw, a hammer and numerous other clubby/stabby/pointy objects within reach, but Rikku was never one to be intimidated by weapons of mass destruction.

"Hi. I'm Yuffie and I'm making a SHELF!" cried the girl in merriment, stabbing her shelf with the chisel. She succeeded in making it collapse ... even more ... than it already was...

"Here, let me help!" said Rikku, as she pulled Yuffie's disaster towards her.

A cloud of dust flew around the shelf, as Rikku's hands seem to multiply. Roughly 0.82 seconds later a perfectly constructed shelf seemed to magically _appear_ in place of the crappy one. And thus, from the clouds of dust, the grand continent of Atlantis rose up from the sea and started distributing shelves to needy children.

"Wow..." said Yuffie, a grin on her face. "I'm gonna be getting rich A's for this! Your my friend... Rikku!"

Roxas scowled, scuffing his shoes against the surface of the tech room floor, not caring if they got covered in sawdust. He didn't _like_ this school. He'd barely been there an hour, and already he fit in just as well as a sore thumb on the hand of somebody with four normal fingers.

Rikku was in her element, chatting to the dark-haired girl as if they'd been separated from birth. Everybody would be tripping over themselves to ask her to sit with them at lunch.

If Roxas knew how to make a shelf, maybe he'd have a best friend already, but noooo, Roxas's special talent was ... that ... he didn't have one ...

Yeah.

"Can we go see the other kids now?" asked Mindy.

"I want to show them my drawings," chipped in Naminé, acting for the first time in her life like a _real_ child. Not a porcelain dolly, but somebody who wanted to make friends and go to slumber parties and paint toenails.

"Of course," said Cid in his gruff voice, taking one last sweeping look around the technology room, as if trying to see if anybody had been clubbed around the head with the mallets and stuffed under the brazing hearth. It wouldn't be the first time – and wouldn't be the last.

Satisfied the limbs of any dead children were not peeking out from under the numerous dangerous whizzy/spinny/stabby-stabby machines, he nodded his head in approval. Everybody in the class had been waiting with baited breath for the almighty 'nodded head of approval' and once it had been given they all sighed and slumped their shoulders.

Tidus absent-mindedly attempted to kick the tell-tale limb of dead creature under the sanding machine, whistling.

"Come on, Rikku," said Meg, beckoning for her to follow them on their happy little way out of the class.

Rikku turned to look at Yuffie, and shrugged.

"Can I stay here for the rest of the day, please? Yuffie can show me around and I'll have a head-start on everyone cause I can get my books and timetable and all that jazz today!"

"Well..."

Rikku pulled her puppy-dog eyes.

In the Rikku handbook to prevent accidents, pulling puppy-dog eyes was one of the best ways to get what you want, right up there with screaming Hakuna Matata non-stop at the top of your lungs and playing tennis in the greenhouse.

"Of course she can," said Cid warmly. "She's fitting in like a gem – our school needs more children like her, what with her shelf constructing skills. The art of high-speed-shelf-building is being dreadfully overlooked in these modern, hip and funky times."

Nobody bothered to tell Cid that nowadays you could just go to the local DIY store and pick up a shelf on the way home from school. Nobody wanted to burst his happy bubble.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Roxas scowled as the last of his sisters went into a classroom to actually spend the rest of the day there.

Every one of them fit in somehow. Except for him. The odd piece of the jigsaw.

Naminé plodded into her room, laden with her pictures as proof of her new-found popularity. The kids in her class seemed enraptured by the colourful paintings.

And Naminé was happy with that.

Mindy had gone off with some kid called Shoe and a girl called Lenny ... or something. Roxas could remember it like it was yesterday, even though it had only been ten minutes ago.

The day his Mindy had grown up (the day she had found people as crazy as she herself, claiming they had multiple brothers and sisters all called Tidus and Yuna)...

Roxas scowled, they were all gonna be popular. Even though he wasn't. It was all his fault they were moving, and he hadn't even wanted to. It just proved how little his parents knew or cared about him.

"Well, that concludes our tour, so... Rock, are you sure you wouldn't prefer to go to your class?" Roxas shook his head. Cid shrugged, "Well... I'll be seeing ya'll. Bye."

And with that he just left them, stranded in the desert with no food or water, only a weird physics teacher in the background, who suddenly disappeared in a whirl of snow... in the desert. A tumbleweed blew past signifying nothing interesting happened as Meg, Hercules and Roxas walked over to their car. Which was about four feet away.

"Well, off we go, back home to-"

"Mom, don't say its name. I hate it. You know I do..." commented Roxas, sulking in the back of their seven-seater. It was probably only the second time he'd been able to sit there in the two years that they'd owned the car because of all the other kids in the family.

"Sorry..."

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"Rikku! Sit next to _me_!"

"Over here, 'Ku!"

Ku?

"Y0, wh55up, 5!+ h3r3, 700000001!"

As much as she hated to, Rikku had to very kindly flat-out refuse the invitations to sit at Tidus's and Yuna's tables. And she wouldn't have sat at the ... orange ... thing's (more formally known as Wakka's) table if she was forced at musket-point from some old lady sat in a rocking chair with horns on her head. Even through his verbal speech she could hear the N00b-ish numbers seeping into his conversation. Just by looking at the abomination sat with his followers picking at a tongue sandwich she could feel her IQ dropping.

Rikku sat her orange (oh shudder) plastic tray down at Yuffie's and table, just as she'd promised.

"H3110 9uy5..." Rikku started, before slapping her forehead roughly with her hand to gain control over her speech again. The rumours she'd heard were true – so much as _looking_ at Wakka turned you into 'one of them'.

Yuffie shot a rather nervous glance at the orange table, where Wakka stood with a crown on his head, looking around at the assembled students who were worshipping the ground he sat on, no matter how peculiar it smelled.

"Don't you feel sorry for them?" asked Rikku, pointing at one small girl who seemed to have hypnosis rings radiating in her eyes, as she gazed upon the evil Sith Lord, Darth Wakka. Wakka Vader. The ultimate evil villain in all the Destiny Islands School sagas.

"They're beyond saving. They've been in the presence of the Dark Lord too long that they've become one of him. As a good Lion King song hath taught us, they are one."

It was true.

Rikku could vaguely hear Wakka conducting some sort of speech to the poor misguided souls at his table, that sounded an awful lot like: "7h3r3 15 n0 900d 0r 3v!1, 7h3r3 15 0n1y h!r 4nd 7h053 700 w3 70 533 1+." Rough translation: "There is no good or evil, there is only hair, and those too weak to seek it."

Whilst the girls had been caught up in their mad little shudder-fest that looking at Wakka generally induced they had failed to notice that somebody else had taken a seat beside Rikku, folding up long and gangly limbs to actually fit their legs under the table.

"Damned kiddie-tables... They pay no heed to the average tall guy..." growled the ketchup-haired newcomer, his legs banging into Rikku's and knees pushing uncomfortably against the bottom of the table.

"Hey, hey, hey!" cried Rikku, before Yuffie could even introduce them. She was busy pin-wheeling her arms around in true Rikku fashion. She looked cool when she did it, but if anyone else did that they ended up looking like a spazz trying to flag down a taxi. "I haven't seen you yet."

"I don't know why not..." said Yuffie, picking at her salt-sprinkled fries. She needed to keep her carbohydrate levels up so she could annoy the hell out of the freaks in Maths after lunch. "He's in our tech class and sort of sort of sticks out like a pile of rubble in a fruit bowl."

Rikku didn't bother telling Yuffie that, for a large period of time, when they had been living in Olympus seeing rubble in the fruit bowl had been absolutely normal. Hercules claimed he had been renovating the house and left cement mixers left right and centre and bags of sand in the washing machine. Oh, jolly days.

"Maybe I couldn't see him because of that weird inanimate Physics teacher..." said Rikku.

"What weird Physics teacher?"

"You know, the one over there," said Rikku, pointing towards Wakka's table, where a weird inanimate Physics teacher was busy doing the conga on top of the table. As soon as Rikku pointed him out, however, the teacher's skin turned a gradient of yellow and orange and giggled in a funny heliumated way, flying onto Wakka's previously bald head. Wakka grinned evilly, and pressed a finger to his lips, mouthing: '7h!5 15 0ur 7!++13 53 r3+'. Translation: 'This is our little secret'.

"You know what, this is getting silly," mumbled Rikku.

"Anyway, this here is Axel-ol'-boy!" cried Yuffie jubilantly.

It seemed like the most fitting thing to say after that statement was to propose a toast and scream 'champagne, champagne for everyone!'. But as Rikku had no toast and no champagne, she merely settled for an thousand-mega-watt Rikku smile.

"Hello, Axel!" Champagne, champagne for everyone! "I'm Rikku. I'm new here. Hehe. Nobody knows my last name because Cid couldn't read Hercules's terrible childish writing!"

The one known as 'Axel' smiled at the blonde girl who was bouncing around in her seat, with some fries in one hand. She was cute, like a little kid.

"Axel's my boyfriend!" squealed Yuffie in her happy little way, tossing fries into the air and attempting to catch them, seal-like, in her mouth.

After about the thousandth attempt, she actually managed to win her little game, catching one of the fries in her mouth.

If choking on a falling fry and then regurgitating it back out onto the table counts as 'winning'.

Champagne, Champagne for everyone!

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

As arranged, the two sisters met outside the school, by the carpark, which was a pretty dangerous place to go. But, nonetheless, they still stood there until the third and final sister would get there. They would pay no heed to the bloodthirsty hollers of drunken drivers as they swerved in the way of kids who would go flying here, there and everywhere.

And Rikku was getting tired of waiting for Mindy. She looked at Naminé who was tapping her foot, staring at a kid the other side of the road.

She looked up at Rikku and gestured for her to lower her head so she could whisper something to her older sister. Rikku bent down, tucking her hair behind her ear, "Yes?"

"Rikku... Can I go to Denzel's house, please?" Rikku chuckled, and waved her away. Naminé skipped over to the boy across the road, who grinned and took her hand.

Rikku sighed deeply, waiting for Mindy to come. She was getting _so_ bored of waiting for that little sulky looking creature to appear out of the school gates. And so far, it hadn't.

After about another half an hour she saw Mindy come out from the park across the road. Rikku's blood temperature rose.

"MINDY! GET HERE NOW!" she screeched. Mindy pouted, slouching as she crossed the busy road to get to her angry sister, "MINDY! WHERE WERE YOU GOING?! YOU ARE SO GROUNDED! So, no pouting, no sad faces... and no glaring either!" Mindy sulked off. Probably to make scary plans on how to find her long-lost siblings with some other 'friends'. The ones she had been walking around with all day, the ones who had their arms linked with her's. Rikku shuddered, she didn't like the look of those two... that boy had a maniacal twitch in his eye like he wanted to destroy the world with a gigantic piece of machina called Vegnagun... and that girl looked like she'd been shot... but then again... Mindy constantly looked like the two of them, and Rikku had gotten used to it. She could get used to the other two freaky kids as well, if they were her friends.

She swayed a little, momentarily forgetting what she was doing, before finally remembering the tiny, minuscule problem she had. Namely, how was she going to get home.

She slapped her head, and wondered if she could still ask any of her new friends for a lift, but then decided that this would be silly as they were probably all already gone. She had been waiting for Mindy a long time. So, she started on her way through the gargantuan car park before stopping at the last automobile left in there, her last chance for a ride home. She didn't to stoop so low as to call her _mother_ for a ride. Imagine what people would say if they saw her speeding away from school in a 'funky' seven-seater people carrier.

"No way..." she muttered, as she examined the last vehicle. It was defiantly a better option than going home in a people carrier. "NO WAY!" she screamed, "WOW! Who does _this_ belong to? Oh my God! I've got to have a ride on it! I hafta- Oh... hello, Axel..." she nodded at Axel as he moved forward to face the motorbike Rikku had been gawking at. He grinned.

"You like it?" he asked, his grin turning into a smirk. Rikku nodded her head as hard as she could before it would fall off. While other little girls had daydreams of riding around in horse-drawn carriages or snow-white limos, she'd always dreamed of going on a motorbike. Going _fast._ She was a speed-demon, which was the main reason why she hadn't got a driver's license.

"Y-Yours?" gulped Rikku, staring into its shiny surface and wishing it belonged to her. Axel threw his head back and laughed.

"Yeah, you wanna ride?" he asked, getting on the bike. He held out his hand for Rikku to take. She took it a little sheepishly.

"Won't Yuffie mind?" Axel laughed again.

He turned round to look at her, "You're such a worrier aren't you?! Is Yuffie here?" Rikku looked around, and no, Yuffie did not appear to be there... but that weird physics teacher was... and so was some weird shiny, (oh so shiny) silky (oh so silky) hair. "She's probably at home... with Leon..." Axel bent his head down.

"Is Leon her brother?" Rikku asked, innocently.

Axel looked up at the darkening sky, "Nope... but oh well... You better hold on tight! I go fast!" he smirked as Rikku gripped him round the waist, cursing silently how skinny he was.

"I like fast," she smirked back.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

The weird lump of silver hair quivering behind the bushes swore violently in all the colours of the wind as he watched his only salvation from the hell-hole speeding away.

He normally got a ride home from school with Sora's mother, but the dozy brunet was at the hospital with Kairi after she had been attacked with the killer soap.

Riku sat watching Axel's motorbike speeding away, over the hill, across the bridge and over the state border, slamming his first against a mound of earth. And, as the sound of the revving bike faded away, he cast a nervous glance around the car-park. He could just go and try to find Sora in the hospital as it was next-door to the school, but the snag was that Riku was terrified from shifting from his position, which was currently in a holly bush, and Sora had most likely called his mother and gone home already, anyway.

The poor boy shivered as the wind whipped around him, stinging his arms and face and the red marks the evil prickly bush had made. He had heard several stories of pink-scythe-wielding maniacs who prowled around school car-parks long after the students had gone home. They only lived to murder those poor unfortunate souls who had no mobile phones or rides home.

_Tap._

Riku's head twisted around frantically in search of the source of the noise. He couldn't see anybody, but saw a quick blur of a white lab coat disappear around the corner.

Stalker Physics teachers now, was it?

"This is getting ridiculous..."

**A/N:** _Riku's gonna get EATEN by a demon Physics teacher! I wonder what will become of him._

_Anyway, Axel may seem a little OOC, but later on he will prove he is not. He is just being nice to Yuffie because he's going out with her and he's being nice to Rikku because everybody loves Rikku. To everybody else he will be evil._


	4. C3: the messiah emerges

**Author/s:** Skitts + Lamatikah –eleven fingered salute-

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.

**Disclaimer:** Heh. Kingdom Hearts rules my little world. Just like I rule i- wait... no I don't... damn...

* * *

F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_**--**Chapter 3**—**_

**_x_-_The Messiah Emerges_-_x_**

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

As Rikku gripped Axel tightly, she felt the rush of the wind whip her hair behind her, and she felt a tug on her plaits. A car swerved close by and Rikku found herself clinging even harder. She could hear Axel laugh above the roar of the engine and the rush of the wind. She giggled inaudibly, and clutched tighter as another car almost threw her off.

She wasn't sure whether to trust Axel. He seemed nice enough, but then again, he seemed like the one who would bite your head off with sarcastic comments if something you said or did was wrong.

She whimpered as Axel pressed his foot further down on the pedal. He was going way over the speed limit, and Rikku was so scared. She'd never actually been on a motorbike before, and the fastest she'd ever travelled in a car was only 70 mph, which at the time she had thought was 'fast'.

Axel slowed down and pulled over.

"I thought you said you liked fast..." he smirked. This kid smirked a lot. And Rikku was getting kind of annoyed with it. Eh, maybe when she got to know him better then it wouldn't annoy her so.

Rikku panted heavily as she caught up with her breath. Axel got down from the bike, and pulled her down with him.

"Rikku?" he asked softly. No longer was he smirking. Rikku wiped a hand across her nose. She stumbled a little before looking back up at him.

"I'm okay!" she stated, bringing her index finger to the air. Axel laughed, perhaps a little nervously this time, and pulled her into a big bear-hug, "Axel! What about Yuffie?!" cried Rikku. Axel snorted.

"Yuffie?" he laughed, squeezing Rikku some more, "Yeah... I'm sure _she'd_ care!" Rikku was taken aback by what Axel was saying. She thought Yuffie cared about Axel and vice versa. Obviously not. Maybe it had something to do with this 'Leon' person.

"Hey... Axel... What are we gonna do here?" asked Rikku, staring round at the totally new surroundings. Axel shrugged.

"I can take you home. I don't really hang around here much," Rikku nodded, still staring round at all the places she'd never seen before. Axel laughed and picking her up, placed her back on the bike. Rikku giggled.

As Axel plopped himself back in his seat there was a shout, Rikku's head flipped round, scared that it might be Yuffie. She didn't want to get on the bad side of Yuffie, mainly because she felt like best friends already, and the other reason was because if she was friends with Yuffie then she could find loads of other friends, too. And maybe a friend for Roxas!

"Demyx! Demyx, there you are, you stupid little boy!" joked Axel, jumping off the bike yet again to greet his friend. Rikku fell forward as Axel left her. She didn't want to be seen, because according to Roxas all the people here were stupid and gay.

"Erm... Axel... do you think I could walk home from here then... 'cuz I really need to get home... or my mum'll flip... you know?" Rikku asked him, stuttering a little in the presence of this new person.

"Oh, sorry Ri', I'll come back for you Demyx. How come you weren't at school today?" Demyx shrugged and saluted Axel as the red-head pushed Rikku back onto the bike. She waved back at Demyx. Demyx jumped up and waved as hard as he could to Rikku. So Rikku, being the practical person she was leapt off the bike.

Eventually they started to have a contest of who could wave the hardest with the most amount of (_decent_) body parts. Rikku clinched it with her nose, but Demyx was not far behind with his ears. Axel on the hand had driven off, and they hadn't realised. Soon, they watched as a pretty motorcycle came zooming into view with a laughing red-head perched on it. Rikku laughed, even thought she didn't see what was so funny. Then, hopping onto the bike with some help from Axel, she left, this time waving normally, with her hand, to Demyx.

Demyx, not realising they had finished their little competition, was left stood there waggling his ears until the motorbike sped off and all that was left on the street was him, a trash can, and an old lady who took one look at him and hobbled off with her cane, clutching her purse protectively.

All self-respecting villains draw attention to themselves by waggling their ears before they mug old ladies, of course.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Roxas was depressed.

That was a bit of a silly statement as, because Roxas was an emo, he was entitled to be depressed.

But this gloomy afternoon he had an even bigger right to be crowned King of Emo. He was going to have to troop into school tomorrow with his assortment of weird family members. Eventually they would all make like bananas and split, split into their own small groups of friends, or, in Rikku's case, be mauled by the entire student body, all of them waving Chemistry books and claiming she signed all of them because she was '_cool and all that_' and _'so totally pwnsome_' and _'$h3 w0u1d /\/\ 3 4n 3x 3113n+ nd!d+3 ph0r 0ur 0rn93 h!r3d 739!0n5 0f 00\/!_' Which, in English, roughly translates to: 'She would make an excellent candidate for our orange-haired legions of doom'. And then he, Roxas, would be left alone, trailing around the school field whilst his sisters ran past giggling and signing Chemistry books.

To improve his dark moods he was in the attic that had yet to be cleaned out, lying back against the wooden timbres that created their roof. His MP3 player was securely in his ears and he was swivelling through numerous depressing songs, trying to find the one that summed up his current mood the best.

He had even been kicked out of his own room. He had been kicked out of several rooms because he was just a little cloud of gloom hovering in the corner and was disturbing his family as they went about their daily business.

He'd been banned from the kitchen because Meg was cleaning up after dinner.

He'd been banned from the living room because Mindy and her school friends, Shoe and Lenny, were in there, with the blueprints to the sewers of Destiny Islands spread out over the coffee table. When he asked about this Shoe had rolled his eyes and said that his half-brother his parents were trying to pretend he didn't have was probably down there living on toxic waste and that was why he had never seen him. Roxas pointed out he had probably never seen his half-brother because he probably didn't have one, but Lenny had rolled his eyes and said he was a shallow human being.

He'd been banned from the bathroom because Hercules was in there. Either he had some severe stomach problems as he'd been in there all of two hours or the toilet had gone bust and was spewing out that toxic gunge in the sewers Shoe had mentioned. Maybe it was even spewing out several of his half-brothers as well...

He'd been banned from the study because apparently opening the door triggered some sort of booby trap set by the previous owners of the house. Hercules had been the unfortunate one who had found this out yesterday. He'd been walking around like he'd been crushed by a ten tonne bookcase all day, which was strangely ironic because he _had_ been crushed by a ten tonne bookcase that was triggered to fall on anybody who dared open the door.

He'd been banned from Marluxia's room because he was up there with his life-long friend, Larxene, and Larxene scared Roxas. An awful lot. The antenna'd girl was amazingly protective of his other sibling, if taking two-hour car journeys to see how he was doing every day was any indication of loyalty and protective-ness. The blonde girl felt that she always had to be there to shield Marluxia from the real world, because he wasn't like normal people and always needed somebody's hand to guide him. And to play at painting his toe-nails, even though they were both in their early twenties.

He'd been banned from Rikku's room because she was dancing around to something by _Aqua_, singing loudly in front of her mirror. Some things never changed...

He'd been banned from his parent's room because ... Well, actually, he hadn't been banned from his parent's room, but what kid actually wants to venture into the room your parents share? Roxas didn't want to scar himself for life.

And, last but not least, he'd been banned from his _own_ room because Naminé had locked herself up in there with some kid called Denzel and they were drawing.

And so, through all of those long-winded explanations presented forth in a detailed report for you and only you to study, you can deduce that the only place Roxas hadn't been banned from was the attic. And he probably would have been banned from there too if Meg knew he was up there, in fear he would put a foot through a rotten floorboard or something.

The boy sighed, trying to avert his mind from depressing thoughts of school tomorrow, getting his bags packed, Sora, algebra and young Mindy's sanity.

He clicked his MP3 player off, and decided to do something he should have done a long time ago.

He was going to see if there was any leftover pizza downstairs in the kitchen from their dinner.

And then maybe he was going to phone Selphie and see how she was 'hanging'.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"_Oh, hello Roxas._"

"You don't seem too excited to hear me, Selph."

"_Oh, it's not that... it's just I was waiting for a call from Olette..._"

"Olette?"

"_Yeah, I made some new friends recently... I was just walking by myself down the Colosseum, and these kids started shouting at me and this boy was whistling, and then I got sad. So I started to cry right then and there, 'cuz I missed you and stuff... and then this girl came up to me, and she was all 'OMG! Are you okay?' and I was like 'No' and then she said that I could go to her house and stuff but I told her I couldn't because I had to phone you. And then she was all 'it's alright, I understand' and then these two kids came up and one was all 'Pence! If you want to stop thinking about her then you should stop taking photos and living in the past' and then I thought, 'I don't think Roxas would mind if I just went to the girl's house, and I missed ONE measly little phone call with him' you know? And so I went to her house and I found out she's really cool, and Pence and Hayner were there too, and they were cool too, and... Roxas... Roxas?_"

Roxas blinked. He was upset at how fast she'd gotten over him. And shocked. And upset. He could feel a warm sensation fill his eyes, but he blinked any trace of it away.

"_Oh my God! Roxas, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it, honestly, Roxas! I didn't mean to ditch you, I didn't mean all that stuff... Roxas..._"

Roxas wiped his eyes, and shouted into the phone, "I hate you, Selphie! You dug your own grave! Go and lay down in it!" and with that he hung up.

Selphie could hear a long 'beeeeeeeep' and then a 'crash' coming from somewhere behind her.

"I guess Zidane's already done that for me..." A weak little 'help' could be heard, "It's alright Zidane, the ambubblyliance will come soon..." she told him, whilst dialling that three-numbered code which would soon put her online with the local police-fire brigade- ambulance services. Maybe digging a grave in the living room _was_ a little extreme.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Roxas circled his spoon round the bowl, not sure whether he should eat it or not. Rikku looked at him in her uniform – a short blue miniskirt, a white shirt and a blue tie. She gave Roxas a look of pure wonderment, before shifting places with Mindy to get next to him.

"Roxas... what's the matter?" Roxas muttered something intelligent and inaudible. Rikku leant her elbow on his shoulder, "Aw, c'mon Roxie, what's up? You can tell me!"

As Roxas looked up to see his sister pulling puppy dog eyes at him, he shuddered. Everything was just a reminder of the uniform he had to wear, sure it was good for girls, but _not_ for boys – they had to wear blue chequered pants, along with the blue chequered tie and the white shirt. But whereas the girls could leave the shirts untucked, the boys had to... tuck... them... in...

A bus horn sounded outside and Roxas jumped up, not expecting it. Rikku looked around, suspicion glinting in her eyes, "Hey... there's a bus... how come there wasn't a bus to take us home...?" Was this all just some giant plot to further her dream of riding on a motorcycle? It seemed not just _people_ adored her, but the grand circle of life was also altering itself and shifting around for the convenience of the blonde girl.

Meg, the almighty fountain of knowledge, shrugged, very knowledgeably so. "Well, according to Cid (the head teacher and the bus driver) they don't run them at night because local yobs jump out of bushes a lot and ambush moving vehicles. Often they are filthy, unwashed, violent, drunk and silver-haired."

Silver-haired?

Rikku grabbed her satchel and indicated Roxas to do the same. She rushed out of the house to jump on the bus.

Roxas shrugged and took the satchel being handed to him by an unusually happy Naminé. He grabbed her hand and walked her across the road, making sure that the sulky twelve year old otherwise known as Mindy was close behind.

Naminé smiled and pointed excitedly, "Roxas. Roxas! It's a double decker! Can we sit upstairs! Oh _please_!" Roxas gave his sister the biggest smile he'd done in a while, and that still wasn't that big. It was more of a pathetic raising of one side of the mouth that made him look like he had fish-eyes. Yep, it was an improvement.

"Uh hu-"

"Sorry, kid, but you can't sit up there... or go up there for that matter either."

Roxas scowled, "Why not?"

Cid thought for a while before answering, "It better you didn't know, little girl, it better you didn't know..." Naminé's mouth curved into an 'o' as Roxas dragged her to an empty seat. He sat her on his lap so Mindy had to share a seat with them, next to the window; Roxas was not risking her running away again. Knowing Mindy, she'd open the window and jump out while the vehicle was in full motion, going at death-defying top speeds of 20 mph. Probably dragging a few children who'd missed the bus along with it, as they held valiantly on the back of the little yellow double-decker.

Naminé played happily with Roxas, playing games like 'Patty cake' and 'A sailor went to sea'. Roxas made noises such as 'heh' when he played these, and wondered where Naminé's sudden social burst had appeared from. Probably that... Damsel kid...

At least Naminé seemed happy enough, but Roxas kept glancing self-consciously around the students that were sat in the bus. They all looked so friendly with each other, joking and shouting and throwing paper aeroplanes. Rikku fit in perfectly, sat next to a boy who looked like a grown-up version of Shoe, but with less of shifty look around the eyes department. She was the one in the centre of the crowd, the one telling the best jokes and the most laughs and making the best paper aeroplanes. She had run away from Roxas and lost all ties with her family – she had to, if she wanted to keep her reputaition up. Although, she wasn't really related to them anyway, so she had every right to leave them in the dust. But even Naminé and Mindy were moving on with their life and making new friends, and Marluxia and Roxas had never been on the same wave-length to begin with. Marluxia had moved on long ago, when Roxas was still a baby.

Roxas wished he was enjoying all the merriment of a journey to school with everybody else. The friendly-looking kids...

Well, everybody looked friendly, apart from the kid sat at the back with orange hair, smirking. A group of young, misguided souls sat around him with blank expressions on their ghostly white faces, deep purple rings under their eyes.

The Wakkalord glanced at Roxas and laughed deeply and evilly, and Roxas immediately swivelled his head around and stared blankly ahead, shuddering.

Whilst getting off of the bus, Roxas ruffled Naminé's hair and she ruffled his back. Mindy just scowled as usual.

As soon as Rikku scooted off the bus she went off to find Axel... or Yuffie... or Demyx, since she recently found out he went to the school.

Roxas watched as his sister skipped away from him. He was scared, soon he'd be alone. Without even Selphie this time. Sora would just add to his pains. And that friend of Sora's looked like a popular kid, and that friend obviously didn't like Roxas so Roxas was screwed.

He felt a tug at his hand as Naminé willed him to let go of hers. Reluctantly, Roxas let go.

Mindy had already run off and found her friends.

Maybe, Roxas would have gained from going to school yesterday. But, he didn't so, he'd just have to live with that.

And so, taking the first few steps, he managed to get into the school grounds, just before he tripped over. He could hear familiar laughter behind him as a boy helped some girl out of the bus. The girl had a bandage round her forehead and until Sora had started laughing at his stupid cousin, she had been fine. But now... she seemed to have fallen on the floor too without him there to guide her, and looked severely pissed off and in pain.

PAIN!

Roxas stood up and regained the dignity he didn't have, and walked on.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

The boy circled the school field, attempting to find a nice-looking kid who was standing by themselves to walk up to and introduce himself to. He had no such luck, however – everybody was categorised into groups of friends and he didn't seem to fit any group. He was too shy to go up to fifteen Blitzball players because there were so much of them and so little of him. Yes, they all had muscles the size of Uncle Oogie Boogie and Roxas was a skinny little wafer.

Roxas didn't feel comfortable going to the groups of geeks, jocks, preps, cheerleaders, nerds, punks or chavs. He even shunned the emos, a small collection of children stood in the corner with hair hiding their faces and MP3 players plugged in, having engaging conversations that went like this: '...' '...' '...'. He didn't want his own bretherin to reject him, a fellow emo lost in the storm of Destiny Islands School For All Ages students.

The boy sighed in defeat after his third circuit around the school field and backed up, resigning himself to the fact he was always going to be an unpopular nerd and would never have any friends.

"Life suckkkkksssssss..." muttered the boy.

"Mmmmmphhhhhhhh..." agreed the holly bush next to him.

The first thought that went through Roxas's head was: _Cool, I've just made a friend!_

The second thought that went through Roxas's head was: _Wait a minute, was my rhetorical question just answered by a holly bush?_

The third thought that went through Roxas's head was: _Yeah, on closer inspection it's definitely a holly bush._

The fourth thought that went through Roxas's head was: _I think I should poke it with a pointy stick._

And the fifth thought that went through Roxas's head was: _Heh, I like cheese._

The blond boy picked up the rather pointed-looking stick, and bent down to prod it around in the leafy contents of the bush, humming one of the songs by _Aqua_ which went an awful lot like: '_la, la, dooby-doo, i've clearly forgotten the lyrics to this song, la, la_' all set to the 'far-out-funky' beat of Barbie Girl. Because he probably was trying to hum Barbie girl.

However, 0.92 seconds later all joviality ceased.

0.92 seconds later Roxas got the biggest shock of his life since Aunt Maleficent married Pete.

0.92 seconds later the world was roughly tipped off its axis and the balance of love and hate was shattered.

0.92 seconds later Hercules managed to put a hammer through the toilet – however that is irrelevant to the current topic, as 0.92 seconds later the stars (that were not out as it was morning) aligned in such a way so that the circle of life that had twisted itself around to suit Rikku's needs flipped around. The circle of life refused to screw Rikku over as she was so popular so it took all it's pent-up vengeance out on her little brother instead.

Pay-back is a bitch ...

Whatever God was paying Roxas back for, the boy didn't know. Breathing valuable oxygen that people who made a difference in the world needed for more than him?

For, 0.92 seconds later:

"RAWWWWRRGHHHHHHH!!"

Roxas learnt never to poke bushes with pointy sticks again, especially if the bushes you are poking contain irate silver-haired yobs who smell a bit funny.

All of Meg's words over breakfast came back to him: '_Well, according to Cid (the headteacher and the bus driver) they don't run them at night because local jobs jump out of bushes a lot and ambush moving vehicles. Often they are filthy, unwashed, violent, drunk and silver-haired.'_

Roxas fell back to the ground for the second time that day as the silver haired hobo danced around, screeching like a monkey. It sounded like he was saying 'ugga ugga' but he might have been saying 'kill that bugger' – nobody would know.

"Please don't eat me!" begged Roxas, grovelling at the feet of the demon.

It seemed to be an ordinary school-boy gone _wild._ The school trousers had ripped into a hula skirt and a wreath of thorns around its head...

For, all great prophets say a messiah will one day emerge from the bushes, curse a lot and boogie around a bit before eating the first child they see.

No, wait, I don't think a great prophet ever actually said that...

"Riku?"

The silver-haired mini-skirted demon swivelled its head around at the sound of the familiar voice, to see Sora behind Roxas.

Riku collapsed to the ground and wailed like a little child, a lowly maggot.

"What happened to you, dude?"

"I SMELL FUNNY AN MY CLOTHES ARE DIRTY!"

"Y-e-a-h..."

"AND MY HEAD HURTS AND I MISS MY MOMMY!"

"Go home Riku, go home."

"I WOULD BUT I DON'T HAVE A RIDE!"

"Then go crawl back into your holly bush of doom and despair and let not another word be said about this bizarre encounter."

"Yes sir... Sorry sir..." Riku atoned, crawling backwards into his holly bush and wrapping his arms around his knees. He had been a bad boy and should go sit in the corner.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Roxas followed Sora closely; he didn't want to go to the wrong place on his first day, not that it would make a difference, anyways. Everyone thought he was a freak after what had happened on the field.

Roxas followed Sora into a tiny hall which was meant to be fit for all the elementary, middle and high school.

It was probably because Destiny Islands was a small place and there wasn't much point in having more than one school – it would just cause money problems. Sora lead Roxas to a place on the polished floor where all the other middle school students were sitting higgledy-piggledy across the floor, talking, chatting, chewing gum and popping it in the hair of unsuspecting girls.

Roxas sat down between Sora and a burly looking boy, who apparently went by the name, Rai. Roxas smiled nervously at him.

Rai grimaced back at him.

Roxas put him on his mental stabbity-stabbity list.

Through loud speakers, a very energetic cough sounded and a voice piped up, creating silence.

"Hey y'all kiddie-winks! I'm gonna start off on a positive note – we have four new students today: Rikuh, Nawiner, Windy and Rock. I hope you welcome them, and make friends STRAIGHT AWAY!" At this point Cid laughed a very high-pitched and scary laugh. Roxas's upper lip curled, "Anyways, moving onto a more depressing note – one of our best students died today. I'd like to propose a moment of silence for Kairi. A great loss to us all." Silence fell upon the room, apart from a meek little voice in the background.

"But I'm not dead..." A girl with a thick bandage round her forehead raised her hand somewhere behind Roxas. She was ... pretty. Apart from the great big ugly bandage round her head. He could tell it was the girl he saw yesterday who'd been attacked by some soap of some sort.

Cid sighed, "Ignore the ghost, kids, it's only trying to confuse you..." A murmur ran round the room. Cid looked up, "Kairi-ghost, get out or detention!" The 'Kairi-ghost' however stood her ground.

"But, I'm not dead... or a ghost!" she cried.

"Well, if that be so, then I'd be a _senile old_ FOOL!" cried Cid, a smirk running his lips. Oh, he'd won, he knew he ha- But wait... people... they were laughing...

"CID, YOU ARE A SENILE OLD FOOL!" cried a random kid in high school. Roxas turned to see who, and she saw some red-head high-fiving Rikku. Roxas knew what had happened: Rikku had told him what to say, and red-head had said it. Roxas's eyes narrowed.

Damn you red-head.

Soon after that the assembly was over, after Neil and Jane from the ambulance had taken Cid away to 'Heart Surgery For Old Guys'. Roxas traipsed after Sora, who he hoped was in the same class as him. Sora stopped a minute to wave 'hey' to Neil and Jane, "Hey Neil, Jane..."

"Hey Sora. You haven't been hurting anyone lately? Good... good... Well, it's been surprisingly quiet today, only seven deaths!" Jane happily announced. Suddenly, a scream was heard from down the corridor.

"Well, that sounds like Lulu again, we'll be off. Hey, you seen the new stretcher, yet? It's been made specially for this school – five holders for five whole people! No more of these fancy-pancy, take one limb at a time business!"

"Yeah, I don't think five is enough..." Sora mumbled, lost in his world, "Oh yeah, and you might want to take Riku, he's in the holly bush out there..."

"Thanks for the heads-up So, we've had enough of crazy silver-haired boys jumping up at us out of bushes, or down from church ceilings..." Sora sighed.

"That Sephiroth... he never learns..." he muttered. Neil and Jane nodded in agreement before waving goodbye.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

The blond boy more formally known as 'Roxas, Sora's gay cousin who likes to stick people's heads down toilets' sat at his desk in the form room, examining the clock hung on the wall, pondering over his life. He had only been at the school about an hour and was already getting quite a reputation for being somebody that should be watched at all times so the whole student body could be there to laugh at him when he fell. And Sora was a wonder at spreading rumours at speeds quicker than light. Damn him to hell, was all Roxas had to say.

"I know Sora can be a bit ... annoying..." said the red-headed girl whom Cid had claimed to be dead in assembly and had a heart-attack over. She didn't seem worried that her just being alive might have killed the head-master though; it seemed like incidents like that happened a lot. Roxas guessed Cid must be under a lot of pressure as well, running a school with so many kids to control.

"Yeah, well, that much is obvious..."

"But he's really _sweet_ if you get to know him. I blame his mother... She's always been a bit... Odd... Funny, y'know? I guess you would know as you're related to them. She won't even let me and Riku into her house because she claims we're not 'good enough' for Sora.

A little voice coming from a holly bush outside the window said something that sounded like: 'I r civilised! I r toilet trained! I r the messia-'

The next thing they saw beyond their trusty friend the window were the hospital workers, Neil and Jane, ushering a stretcher laden with the entire Kindergarten class, Cid, a few assorted teachers, a girl called Lulu and then, on the top of the pile of limbs, Riku, balanced precariously on Cid's nose. They were breaching safety, but nobody cared.

"Yeah, that sounds like Belle..." mumbled Roxas, watching as the second hand ticked away the seconds on the clock.

"Yeah. Don't worry; Sora's your cousin, no matter what he says he loves you really."

A voice that sounded an awful lot like Riku's echoed in the background: "Inceesssttt!"

"I highly doubt that..."

"Why? Why do you say that?"

"Cause he hates me."

"What did you do?"

"I have a sister, right-"

"Yeah?"

"And that's what I did wrong."

"What?"

"Having a sister is what I did wrong. He never spoke to me after he found out ... thought my family was too messed-up and weird. Well, apart from yesterday when he hugged me, but that was to boost his popularity and make me seem like a dweeb who constantly needs hugs or I'll fall apart."

Kairi looked slightly offended, glaring a look that could bore a hole through Batfink's shield of steel in the general direction of Sora's head. "My god! The sexist pig! The Italian fiend! What's so bad about having a sister?"

Roxas shrugged in response, as somebody who Roxas guessed was a teacher walked into the classroom, arms laden with books and papers and other crap teachers are expected to carry.

"Alright, g'morning class!"

"G'morning Goofy!" chorused the children in a sweet angelic chorus. Well, everybody did apart from Roxas, who was looking a bit puzzled.

"They call the teacher _Goofy_? Like the dog on TV?" whispered Roxas to the red-head next to him.

Kairi giggled – she hadn't pictured it like that before, but Goofy did sort of look and act like a clone of the big dumb dog, minus the ears.

"No, he's not _Goofy_, he's Mr. Goobadier, but we all call him Goofy because his name takes too long to spell. The truth about how exactly you spell his name has evaded all of us – even Mr. G," Kairi whispered back.

"Well, hello there, I tip my hat to ye, ay'huck!" said Goofy, looking at Roxas. "New students are always welcome here, unless they're French, in that case we have to BURN THEM ALL!"

Several students in the back row pulled off their berets and ate them. Quickly.

"Ve arrrre all as Amerih-cahn az zoo Oinglis fouk," said a kid with a strong ... well, it couldn't be a French accent because Goofy just said all French people would be burned at the stake, so they were obviously speaking with a GERMAN accent.

"Of course you are, Frere Jacques, of course you are... If you were GERMAN though, I'd put a bullet through you!"

Roxas sighed – it seemed like the whole purpose of this lesson was to insult everybody of every race, creed, colour and dialect, apart from Americans.

"AND IF YOU WERE AMERICAN I'D SIT ON Y- No, wait, scratch that..." smiled Mr. Goofy placidly. "Anyway, let us take ze rejisterrr. Sora?"

"Here Goofy."

"Wakka?"

"j0 \/4/\/ 1 7!3 $T34 ph20\/ 73 4$!" cried Wakka.

"Yes, Wakka is defiantly here... Riku?"

Again to our trusty friend the window. Everybody turned their heads to see Riku jumping off the stretcher and shouting 'I R HERE SIIIRRRR' before Neil and Jane descended upon him with nets and hooks and ripped him back onto the stretcher with a terrible howl.

"Riku's going to the crazy house for a bit, sir."

"Understood."

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

**A/N: **_Everybody knows NEIL and JANE right? Actually, these both started out as random OCs but then we realised they were both in Final Fantasy Spirits within and we freaked out. So we can still proudly say there are no OCs in this story._

_Hehe. Final Fantasy Spirits Within SUCKED. Like, big-time. The main character was like 78. Like Cid._

_Anyway, review and you get updates and Roxas actually gets to MEET Axel sometime and actually make it into an AkuRoku. I bet the people who just read these stories for instant AkuRoku fluffiness are disappointed, as in most AkuRoku stories they're at least introduced in the second chapter. No, not it in this fic. The time is not ripe._

_The time is ripe, however, to plough the fields of the Savannah and shoot Wakka in the head! No, wait, the time is always RIPE for shooting Wakka._


	5. C4: a word from donald duck

**PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT!!!!!!!!**

**Right, there are two versions of chapter 4. The second version is the crazier version that was written at three a.m. with a lot of sugar for company. This version is the more sane version that makes more sense, the second one is crazy. But they share the same ending cause the ending is important to the plot. Okay? Read both… And then say which chapter 4 is the best.**

**Author/s:** Skitts is writing this with Lamatikah –fifty-eight fingered salute-

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.

**Disclaimer:** I LIKE SUGAR! Just thought you might want to know...

* * *

F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_**--**Chapter 4**—**_

**_x_-_A Word From Donald Duck_-_x_**

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Rikku watched Roxas travel upstairs. He seemed to be travelling a lot happier than usually. She grinned, and followed him upstairs.

"Stop following me."

"I saw you with that girl today."

"So?"

"You look happy."

"So?"

"Do you _liiiike_ her?"

"No."

"Awwww, why not?"

"Because she's not even my proper friend."

"Will she be?"

"Dunno."

"Okay."

Rikku somehow drifted off into the background, as the stairs decided to end as the conversation did. Those stairs scared Roxas, they seemed to be a part of Rikku's brain or something... they would do whatever she said... And it was ... odd, to say the least.

Roxas sidled into his room, Naminé was sitting on her bed, swinging her legs and sketching a picture of someone.

"Who's that, Nammy?" he asked, peering over her shoulder. Naminé blushed and quickly hid her canvas, "Oh I know! It's that... Damned... Damned Hill boy, isn't it?" Naminé pouted as Rikku walked past the door, the stairs must have carried her there, and started to tell Roxas off.

"Roxas! You don't even know Naminé's best friend's name?! It's Denzel and even I know that!" She walked on, or maybe the stairs walked her on... ON AND UPWARDS I SAY!

"Pfft..." Roxas flopped down onto his bed and after a while Naminé could hear heavy breathing coming from the boy. His head was pressed again the pillow and he was muttering something inaudible and unintelligent.

Naminé moved closer, in the vain hope of hearing something worth trying to listen to. Roxas, in his sleep, was cleverer than this though, and turned over so it would be near impossible unless she yanked him round and forced him to speak his dream-talk, but that would just be cruel and silly.

She left him to sleep as Meg called everyone downstairs to have some dinner.

Once she got back upstairs, Roxas was no longer in the room; she shrugged and carried on with her sketch.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Roxas was not a very perceptive person early in the morning.

Of course, _nobody_ is a very perceptive person early in the morning. The hours where the sky is delicately pink and the birds sing sweetly sing their 'get off your fatass you … … fatass…' symphony to wake you up are usually the hours you most wish you'd never been born. Nobody likes hearing a mad mixture of jeering birdsong, obnoxious alarm clocks, enraged mothers and hyper younger siblings all shrieking in your ear for you to 'WAKE UP SLEEPY-HEAD!' or, in the case of the alarm clock, 'BRRRINNNGGGG'. Nobody likes stumbling around their room searing under the bed for the renegade sock on strike or charging downstairs to throw some porridge/bacon/cereals down their throats, choking a few times, grabbing their coats and schoolbags and running out the door, then running back inside remembering to put on their shoes, then running back outside, then getting halfway to school before running back to pick up their books.

Due to mad getting ready for school preparations the morning heralds, along with promises of geography tests and caretakers who trundle around with trolleys, nobody is really feeling their best when they first arrive to school.

Usually the average kid is still tugging a brush through their hair, attempting to clean their teeth, taking a few bites out of an apple, revising for a German test and completing some piece of homework all at the same time as they trundle through the school gates, eyes gummed up with crusty yellow sleep.

So, as we have nicely stated above in a more bite-sized sentence (not that I suppose you really want to take a bite out of my sentences – at this point I feel it necessary to tell you that you are reading these words on a COMPUTER and if you try to bite them you will be left with a very badly chewed-up, sparking piece of technology) 'Roxas was not a very perceptive person early in the morning'.

But even Roxas, in his early-morning stupour, realised that the jolly, good natured 'funfunfun' Mr. Goobadier was the one taking assembly that morning.

He guessed Cid was still staying over at the local exotic resort of 'la hospitalle', free one-way tickets for OAPs. You go in suffering from lung disease and probably never come out.

"Hello classmates! G'morning!" cried Mr. Goobadier, pinwheeling his limbs around in merry circles, succeeding in whacking that 'Shoe' kid around the head as he sullenly crept into the assembly hall, late.

"Oh, Sock!" cried Mr. Goobadier brightly, revealing to everybody in the hall that Shoe's name wasn't Shoe but Sock. Roxas smiled as he made a mental note to remember that name and put it to further use – wouldn't Mindy be impressed when he revealed he knew her friends name! "G'morning. Go take a seat and try to be careful tuh'morro."

Mindy glared at Mr. Goobadier in her rather emo depressive way. She had obviously been taking lessons off her older brother, as she patted the spare section of bench beside her, Sock running forth away from the teacher into a sea of faces and names, to be forever lost to time.

"Anyway, kiddies, I know you normally have Mr. Cid to give you a few wise words bu'fore your day starts, and as I am the most competent teacher here I have been asked tah fill in for 'im. So, today's assembly will be about **health!**"

Of course, when people talk about health, this generally procures lots of audible groans and inaudible cussing about what a boring assembly it's going to be.

Of course, nobody expected the teacher to link 'health' to 'break-dancing', but whatever floats his boat.

"A great way of keeping fit, healthy and ready tah role is to take up your ruby-encrusted dancin' shoes and dance them extra pounds off," declared the teacher brightly, as he donned his 'ruby-encrusted dancin' shoes' and held up a portable radio he had … somehow … hidden behind his back the whole assembly, even though he had been waving his arms around so much there was no possible way he could have held it behind his back. And his outfit lacked a pocket at the back as well, doubling to the kids' confusion.

Naminé, meanwhile, smiled contentedly – they did it on Scooby-Doo, so why should her seven-year-old-brain ponder that it was impossible to float a radio behind your back?

Damn that Scbooy-Doo and its brain rotting-ness.

"Jinkies!" cried a small girl in Mindy's class, as she sort of techno track started playing from the speaker Goofy had set on the floor, the floorboards shaking along to the 'groovy' beat. Well, of course 'I Love You' from Barney was probably considered cool and funky and techno back when dinosaurs and Mr. Goobadier roamed the earth, but back then all they had was crappy break-dancing, purple dinosaurs and happy songs about hate and violence. So, they had no Groove Coverage or Pink back then. They did, however, have a band called 'Blue'. Later they were all shot by a deranged girl whose name begins with 'L', last letters 'amatikah'

No members survived.

"Look at me! Look at me groove, kids!" screamed the enthusiastic teacher, as he spun around and put his foot into a box of Kleenex tissues that really should have been in the overflowing trash can in the corner. Why it wasn't sitting pride of place atop the throne of rubbish was anybody's guess, but it was not anybody's guess as to what happened next.

No guesswork needed to be involved, as several kids took out their phones and started to record the event that was about to unfold, others quickly running back home to microwave popcorn and then running back in with the popcorn, sitting down and handing it around to the people.

Rikku munched the popcorn Yuffie had magically pulled out of her bag ('always thinking ahead' Yuffie had said, when asked for an explanation, although there was no explanation as to why it was still _warm_ if it had been in her bag about a month) as the music descended into it's most climatic moment (the tape got chewed up and distorted Barney's voice, making it sound like: "love.looooveeee.me.me.i.love.me.you.me.loooveeeee.meeeeeeee')

The rather gormless teacher spun around with the Kleenex box making for a rather 'trendy' foot accessory. However, trendy as it was it was also a safety issue, as the bright lights of the phones blinded him and sent him flying backwards into a wall. Dancing around aimlessly to a slowed down and mixed around rendition of 'I Love You', the teacher somehow managed to upend the bin on his head, smash the whiteboard in two and get the red and yellow markers jammed up as his nose, as he crashed to the ground, defeated and dead. Defeated by his own infernal devices.

A low string of laughing and popcorn munching filled the air, as Roxas sat there numbly and wondered if the best way of being fit and healthy really was pitching ones self into a white board with a Kleenex box on one foot and hoping for the best. He'd have to try it out some time…

"Why is there such a high mortality at this school?" asked Neil, as he and Jane trundled forth from the shadows to pick up the concussed Mr. Goobadier and place him on a stretcher.

He looked around to see if any other kids had died during assembly and weren't lying face down on the floor, or had had heart attacks from the shock. They hadn't – even the kindergarteners had grown so accustomed to all the death that surrounded them they stopped caring and became merciless murdering machines. Complete with egg whisks.

"Don't complain … this crazy school is what keeps us in business," said Jane with a small smile, waving at a few of the kids who had rushed forwards to compliment her on her hair.

"Still, why do parents keep sending their kids to this school?" asked Neil in a rather happy voice that contradicted what he was saying. His voice was too happy for the depressing words he spake. Or spoke.

Jane shrugged. "Cause it's the only one?"

"Cid probably killed all the competition a long time ago…"

"Don't be ridic- wait… Actually, I wouldn't put it past him…"

Jane shuftied her eyes (or shiftied, or made her eyes shifty, if you want to get technical) and walked out of the room quickly, before it was her wearing a whiteboard as a ruff and a Kleenex box for a shoe.

Their departure with the much-loved Mr. Goobadier ended, with the closure of the Barney song, which hung in people's hearts for a long time.

For two seconds.

Until they marched into registration.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Their new teacher, following the tragic concussion of Goofy, was called Donald. He was short-ish and duck-ish and grumpy-ish, and he wore a silly little blue outfit with a silly little hat and sat rocking at his desk with a maniacal gleam in his eye, babbling on about Vietnam and how he was THERE, fighting the trenches. Nobody bothered to point out that, as he was crazy, it was impossible that he had ever served in Vietnam. They were sure crazy people weren't hired for the army in fear they'd laugh manically and shoot all their comrades, before tossing a grenade and blasting everybody to Kingdom Come. Nobody wanted to point this out, mostly because they were not sure what he was stroking under the table.

Sora's bets were on a machine gun or a flamethrower or a musket, Riku's on an evil diabolical cat called Fluffy, and eventually he'd swivel around on his chair despite the fact it was the non-swivel variety and say in a dark voice: 'Ah, Mr. Sora, we meet again! FOR THE FIRST TIME!' Cue maniacal laughter.

Roxas thought he had both, though, to be quite honest.

He had, after all, seen _everything_ at this school.

"You know what, _kiddies_?" asked Mr. Duck, leering at them all from over his desk that was too large for him, the light from the windows spilling over his face, making him look evil.

They all shrunk back in fear, looking around and gulping, daring each other to be the first to try to run away. It was sure as hell they weren't safe within the gaze of Mr. Duck.

"W-What?" asked Kairi shakily, brushing a few strands of red hair out of her eyes and nibbling her lip, not wanting to anger Mr. Duck.

"When I was a kid I never wanted to be a temporary teacher. I wanted to manage a **slaughter house!** But then Vietnam happened, I stood up for my nation, and blam! Biff! Splot! Kaboom! Boof! Bang! I'M SILLY! I survived, and what with my horrible, horrible webbed feet, a result of some chemical gas, I was sent to the lowly roll of _temp teacher! _But I know the army folk are still after me with their guns and sirens and alarms, waiting, waiting… I WAS THE FEARLESS MR. DUCK AND THEY ALL WANTED A PIECE OF ME!"

"Duck sandwich…" muttered Sora, and he and Riku giggled silently between themselves, until Mr. Duck's searing glare found their faces, shooting them looks that could freeze ice. They shut up.

"Anyway, as I was saying, I know they're all around here somewhere… Anywhere… Behind the curtains… Under the stairs… In lamps and clocks and flowerbeds they all hide, ready to tear me asunder! BUT FEAR NOT! IF THE MAFIA JUMP DOWN FROM THE CHURCH CEILING WITH POINTED SWORDS NO HARM WILL COME TO YE!"

"He's obviously never met Sephiroth…" muttered Kairi.

"NO HARM WILL COME TO YE BECAUSE OF TRUSTY MARTHA HERE!" screamed Donald, raising a musket, not a cat, from behind the desk.

The kids shrunk back and started to quiver like jellies in school uniform.

"Um… Mr. Duck…" said Kairi slowly, seeming to be the only one brave enough to talk to him.

"What, _little girl?_"

"Shouldn't you be … er… putting the nice rifle…"

"_Musket…_"

"Er, musket away and taking the register? You know? Its rules and regulations… And … er … Yeah … I'll be quiet cause I'm sort of digging my own grave here…" she concurred, laughing nervously as people shot her dirty glares, and Donald _really_ shot her. Well, not really, because that would result in a lot of nasty paperwork, but from his twitching eye it was obvious he wanted to shoot her. He obvious didn't like little kids pointing out to him battling on about 'trusty Martha' was not taking the register.

"Alright then…" hissed Mr. Duck, cackling as he glanced over the sheet that contained all the names of the children in the class. "Sora?"

"Here sir."

"Riku?"

"Here sir…"

"Knew a Riku once… Was a very cowardly solider in the Vietnam War. He tried to run away from battle like the lowly maggot he was and got shot. I should shoot you, boy, for sharing the same name as him…"

"But I'm not _that_ Riku."

"I should shoot you, boy, for answering back to me…"

Riku gulped and decided to wisest course of action was to say nothing.

Half-way through the register, however, the worst thing that could possibly happen just randomly decided to happen.

Sir was half-way through saying Roxas' name when the earthquake alarm bell went off. Loudly.

Earthquake drills (the old 'duck ((if you'll excuse the pun)) and cover routine) were pretty normal at school. On Destiny Islands earthquakes were pretty common and could happen any time, any place, and so all the kids had to be trained against them. Mr. Duck, however, did not seem to know this, or was so crazy he'd forgotten.

"**BRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGG!!!!**"

"RIKU! C'MERE LAD! I _knews_ I should have shot you, you had that shifty look in your eyes! You've led the army to me, haven't you? HAVEN'T YOU? Betrayed my position like the yellow-bellied coward you are! I should shoot you, boy, for proving true to your name…"

"Sir! I didn't bring the army towards you! It's just a practise earthquake drill…"

"I should shoot you, boy, for answering back to me…"

"_Sir!_ If the nice … 'army people' really are coming after you, wouldn't it better to hide under our desks than shoot Riku?" asked Kairi. She didn't really want Donald to freak out and shoot Riku over a pretend earthquake drill… Stress the word '**pretend**'. The fact the floor was shaking was mere coincidence: freaky plumping or under floor heating was probably the cause of that.

Mr. Duck paused for a moment, before smiling.

"Right you are, you clever girl! If the army people are here we should all hide, and throw Riku out the window and make him fight all the enemies bare-handed! Just to prove his worth! AND JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT! AND BECAUSE I'M SILLY!"

"But _sir_, that's not quite what I had in mi-"

"Out you go, boy," said Donald curtly, throwing Riku outside the classroom and slamming the door shut.

Kairi sighed, as Riku gave her the most _horrible_ look, just before the door was slammed in his face and she could see the poor boy no longer.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

However, in the class belonging to the grade 10s, they had no crazy teacher called Mr. Duck who kept babbling on about shooting Riku, or Rikku. But nobody would ever want to shoot Rikku anyway, because she was so sweet and kind and hyper.

"Don't panic kids…" said Mr. Eeyore in his tired-out voice, rubbing his hair and pondering his non-existent moustache for about ten minutes, as the kids all waited patiently for their orders of what to do. If there were a _real_ earthquake they'd probably all be dead by now, what with Eeyore taking so long to come to a decision.

"Sir, in the case of earthquake I think we all shakey-shake our way under our tables, and, uh, vamoose, y'know?" offered Rikku helpfully, looking around nervously as a few picturely loosely blu-tacked to the wall fell off like white paper butterflies. The floor was shaking… This was a bit expensive for a mere _simulation_ of an earthquake. She was sure the school would never be able to afford making the floor shake realistically…

The girl was waving her arms around in 'panic' mode, but suddenly found a rather heavy weight had befallen onto them, anchoring them in place. She paused, wondering if she were dead and had been killed by the earthquake whilst Mr. Eeyore still pondered over their course of action, when she turned and saw her friendly neighbourhood Axel holding her hand.

"A- Ah… Axel?"

"You were shaking. That's all," Axel shrugged. "Thought you were scared…"

Rikku was about to reply with a blush and maybe a quick kiss on the cheek for thanks (she was so continental, 'dahlings') but Mr. Eeyore cut her off with his ultimate words of wisdom: "Yes." Well, WORD of wisdom, but just look upon 'words' as a typo.

Everybody turned to their neighbour in confusion, and, to Axel's great distaste, Yuffie turned to Leon. Her neighbour, that little gay-boy with the scar and the hair that he flipped back, trying to act 'pretty'. Heh. He practically had 'pretty boy' written across his face. Infact, he probably did – once Axel had crept up to him whilst he was sleeping in Physics and written 'I R PRETTYBOY' on his face in permanent green marker. The teacher, surprisingly, smiled and nodded his head, claiming it was all true, and he could stop Axel in his never-ending fight against truth and justice. Or at least his never-ending fight to make an ass out of Leon.

"'Yes' what?" asked Yuffie in confusion.

**And, about two hours later…**

"No…" said Mr. Eeyore.

**About two ho-**

"OH SCREW IT!" cried Axel, diving under his desk and pulling the blonde down after him.

It would have looked quite wrong, to those who had not known it was an earthquake drill, to see the redhead drag the pretty blonde under the table with him, as if they were going to have some sort of heavy make-out session. But those silly people I simply say 'screw you, you have been paying more attention whilst reading the story of you'd know what's going on', and let the scene continue.

Pretty soon, all the kids had found safety from the increased shaking under their tables, whilst Mr. Eeyore stood there, wondering vaguely where all his kids went.

"Yes, children…" said Mr. Eeyore slowly. "My house is made of sticks. It means little to you."

**Meanwhile, under Yuffie and Leon's table, which can be located on Mars, and now, more commonly, Saturn.**

Leon smirked as he 'schmoozed' up to Yuffie, taking now as the moment to tear her apart from her red-headed boyfriend and claim the spoils all for himself. If he ignored the fact the words: 'I R PRETTYBOY' were still written on his head in faint green marker he felt confident. And it was dark under the table, so nobody would be able to see the words on his head, unless they were luminous, which was rather sil-

Oh damn, they **were** luminous.

But he could not let a silly, petty insult stop him in his attempts to win over Yuffie.

"You know, I think I know why we're having an earthquake drill…"

"Why?"

"Cause the earth wants to drive you out of the school so it can ogle at your beauty under the warmth of the sun…"

"Are you saying the earth wants to lure me outside the school, the _only place of safety in these troubled times_, to kill me?"

Leon was no good at this flirting crap, he really wasn't.

"Yes…"

Yuffie sighed, and wished Leon could just wipe of the mask and those (partially) truthful words written on his head and step out of the stoic shell.

And get rid of those crappy pickup lines.

And maybe get a new haircut.

And stop squeezing her leg.

Of course, an angel decided to descend from the sky at that moment and hear her prayers, as Leon's hand was roughly removed from her thigh.

With force.

"GET YOUR FILTHY PAWS OF MY GIRLFRIEND, YOU FUCKIN' PRETTY-BOY!" roared Axel, his temper blazing as red-hot and firey as the colour of his hair, unceremoniously kicking Leon away from the table he shared with Yuffie and under the unoccupied, unstable one in the corner whose legs had a nasty habit of falling off, and fall off one of the legs did. The tremors from Leon's rolling body and the shaking floor made the leg buckle and snap, as the ten-tonne desk descended down on Leon and crushed him into a rather unpleasant sandwich of floor, boy and table. Either picture the sandwich idea, or say that they were all having a wild gangbang and leave it at that. But of course, we cannot just 'leave it as that' because it is impossible for a floor, a table and a dead/unconscious boy to summon up the energy needed to take part in a gangbang. And thus, the circle of life goes on.

"Owch…" muttered Leon, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and a black patch forming around his eye, his legs and arms and heads irregularly broken, sticking out from under the desk at all angles.

"I always wondered why you're meant to hide under heavy tables whilst earthquakes are taking place…" said Yuffie, pondering. She didn't seem to care Leon was very badly hurt; she was stood there, looking down upon his carcass from a great height. This was probably the last time she'd ever be taller than Leon and she had to SAVOUR it.

"Axel…" said Mr. Eeyore in a tired voice. "You cannot expect to kill a kid-" (Leon: But I'm not dead!) "-and go unpunished. We will have to deal with a lot of nasty paperwork-" (Leon: But I'm still not dead!) "-and contact the bereaving parents-" (Leon: I might get better if you'd take the desk off me! Axel: Shut up… /kicks Leon/ Yuffie/takes out popcorn/) "-AND arrange for a funeral-" (hereby Leon has been knocked out by Axel's shoes and is too unconscious to complain) "-and I think that violates a few laws, if not in this state, than in several others. Now go stand outside and think about what you've done."

"B-B-But there's an _earthquake_! He could be **killed** if he doesn't duck down under one of those t-t-tables and…" Rikku had started, but eventually she turned to look at Leon, crushed under the table.

"Actually, I think I'd rather take my chances outside," she muttered, grabbing hold onto Axel's palm, jauntily waving at everybody behind her, then rushing off in search of a better life.

"Come back, children. You will be killed. That will be bad. Axel may die but you are too smart to die. Please." Eeyore attempted to plead, but after a while forgot what he was pleading about and turned to face the class.

"I appear to have lost my tail…"

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Axel and Rikku were running along the corridor, hand-in-hand as chandeliers that only appeared to look more dramatic in their 'last moments' fell down around them and erupted in showers of glass, bursting into flames.

The floor shook around violently, as they ran around endless corridors in search of somewhere safe and soft and squishy and …

"OWWWWWWW-YYYYYYYYYY!"

Safe and soft and squishy and Riku's nose-y.

The kids collapsed in a pile of limbs and eight heads (and counting) outside grade nine's classroom.

From inside, screams of excitement that sounded oddly like a duck quacking could be heard, as the children all attempted to extract themselves from the heap they were laid in, feeling the ground and each other move uncomfortably beneath them.

"_I bet that Riku boy's gone and found himself the army! They'll be here right now, knocking at our door, with Riku's head in one arm, and I'll shoot em all with trusty Martha cause I'm silly and then the school will be liberated and we'll all be free to dance outside on the streets to country music_," said the duck-like voice, becoming closer and more clearer from behind the door, as the piece of wood separating room and corridor was flung open, straight into Riku's nose, blowing him backwards by about two yards and into the path of an on-coming chandelier.

"Oh…" said the teacher, with crazy circles rolling around in his eyes and a musket in his wings (hands), looking up and down at Rikku and Axel as if he were somehow disappointed. "Oh… you're not the army afterall… But I take it you did vanquish Riku?"

"Well, er, he's over there…" said Rikku rather lamely, pointing at the chandelier that the boy was lying under, crushed.

"Well, that's good enough for me!" proclaimed Mr. Duck, shoving them into the classroom. "You good chappie-chaps are free to stay down in the trenches for a while until this horrible shaking wears loose," said the teacher, swinging his arms around to give them a good view of the carnage that had once been the form room of the grade niners. For, oh no, they hadn't just decided to hide under their desks – that would be too easy. Instead, probably under the orders of the deranged teacher who had no place working in their school, they had laid all their desks on the floor on their sides, and were hiding behind them, heads bobbing up and around from over their shields.

"RRROOOOXXXIIIIIEEEEE!" Rikku cried suddenly, spotting Roxas's head bobbing around amongst many others, picking up her skirts (not that she had skirts) like people generally did in old medieval movies where all the women wore skirts and stayed at home and cooked whilst the men rode to war and eventually care home from war, causing all the women to gather their skirts at the front and run forth to meet them in a rather romantic and rib-crushing hug. The sorts of hugs that would kill the older and more asthmatic of us.

Rikku dived under their make-shift wall of defence, dragging Axel down with her, as they landed in an ungainly heap (again) on top of something rather cushiony (déjà vu much?) but this time the thing was not Riku's-nose-y. It was a bit more Roxas-shaped, with a pineapple hair-do.

Roxas made a muffled sort of 'pweet' sound, as the two rather heavy yet strangely skinny teens crushed him, pinning him down.

"Ung… Heh… Hey, Rikku…" said Roxas slowly, as Rikku gave him a bone-crunching hug. Just like in the movies, but with more blood and guts and green stuff shooting out the victims of the vicious hug's nose, things that get cut out of films for time. "And, er, hey…"

"Axel. Got it memorized?" asked the bored red-head, gathering his limbs and moving off Roxas, feeling he was crushing the poor kid.

Roxas nodded, to show he had indeed 'got it memorized'.

"Axel? Isn't that like a car-part?" asked Roxas, as he turned and made himself a comfy nest against the chest of the older boy who had randomly come flying through the air, dragged behind Rikku like the fair maidens in the ninja films that were dragged over tree-tops by male ninjas with kunami and waffles. Roxas liked random people that got pulled through they air – they often signified good things, like money and fame and being crushed. He was thankful for something comfy to rest his head on, aside from the cold, hard wall.

"Shut up…" muttered Axel, as Rikku plodded over and made herself comfy around his legs, both kids sharing space on Axel, clinging to something solid during the troubled times of earthquake-an-ism.

Pretty slowly all the children began to fall asleep, Rikku's head falling heavily against Axel's legs, the after shocks of the pretty small earthquake that had never grown up or managed to spread its wings shaking the floor gently in a soothing lullaby.

"So, uh, how do you know Rikku?" Axel asked the boy who was resting his head comfortably on him. He would have told him to fuck off had it been Leon and maybe kicked under five other desks just for variety, and if it had been anybody else he'd have told them to fuck off and kicked them under one desk. But he didn't mind this weird kid sharing his personal space and breathing in his air – it was relaxing, somewhat, and not in the boring way that Mr. Eeyore was 'relaxing'. He didn't even have it in his heart to tell the boy to stop putting so much gel in his hair cause his pineapple was spiking his nose.

"We're … er …" Roxas would have told him they were 'related', but he didn't want to ruin Rikku's reputation in front of her friend, which he was guessing this boy was. So he lied. But he didn't really, because adopted siblings don't count as actually being _relations_, do they? And neither do IMAGINARY siblings, MINDY! SOMETHING TO BEAR IN MIND! Roxas hoped Mindy hadn't taken advantage of the volatile situation and run off with Leny and Sock in search of their lost (and most likely made-up) brothers and sisters. "Well, me and Rikku, we're like friends. Not very good friends though… I'm like… The little kid beside her… The one she can rest her elbow on or get to hold her beer… Not that she drinks beer…"

Axel nodded, as the slow rhythmic moving of the floor shook the boy into a gentle slumber, thinking maybe he just had a _thing_ for blondes. Blondes seemed to have a thing for him as well, as two of them were perched on him, using him shamelessly as a pillow.

"Well, guys…" said Mr. Duck, storing trusty old Martha away under his desk. "Well, er, red-headed freak…" he corrected himself, noticing only Axel was awake underneath all the piles of limbs and desks tipped on their sides that obscured him from view. "How's about a hearty, rousing Maths exam to shake us out of that 'my-school-hath-just-been-invaded-by-the-army' vibe?"

Axel closed his eyes and quickly pretended to be asleep.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Roxas was pulled to his feet about an hour later by a hyper energetic red-head – not that tall Axel kid, who seemed to have scampered off with Rikku, to the centre of the universe. Or maybe back to their classroom, to be less dramatic.

"What? Is it World War IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIXIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL?" asked Roxas sleepily, proving his DID know his Greek numerals.

"No… I believe that's the title of the newest Final Fantasy game…" said Kairi, pausing to stroke her non-existent moustache.

"Oh well… I was close enough."

"Yes," said Kairi, stroking her existent moustache in deep t- wait, Kairi didn't have a moustache. I'll really have to ask who hath being screwing with our trusty mon script… /turns to glare at Lamatikah/

Lamatikah: You wrote that.

Skitts: … Damn … It appears you are right… Oh well /ponders existent BREAD/

Lamatikah: Wait… No, I did write that.

We shall quickly move on now…

"Anyway, what?" Roxas watched Kairi observantly, pondering his non-existent BREAD.

"Well, the earthquake didn't hit here that much but a few buildings got wrecked pretty bad near the shopping centre. Wanna come gawk and the burning flames and dead bodies?" asked Kairi casually, leaning against the wall.

"Why are you asking me? Why not go with Sora?"

"'Cause Riku got crushed by a chandelier and Sora is at the hospital with him."

"Oh… But wait… This school doesn't _have_ any chandeliers."

"Not any more."

Roxas shrugged, guessing Kairi was probably right, as he grabbed her hand and they ran out of the school, jumping over a chandelier that had fallen in front of the doorway, blood trickling out from underneath in merry patterns.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Sora was sad.

He was walking along with his head hung low, hands balled into fists and stuffed roughly into his pockets.

There was not much point waiting around for Riku to get better at hospital when the doctors had claimed the boy was either dead or unconscious and would only get better with time and several gory operations where they inserted wire metals gears in his chest and cranked it open to poke around in his ribs and mix his heart and lungs up a bit with a spoon. And Sora didn't, as much as he 'loved' Riku, want to watch doctors in white coats poke around at his innards like the contents of a canned of baked beans.

He sighed, walking along the street, looking around at cracked tarmac underfoot and crowds of people gathering around to look at broken buildings and equally broken people. Some were sobbing, a few were crying over dead bodies, and several were cursing the French for the earthquake. And, of course, a small gang of kids at the back of the crowds were whipping their berets off their heads and eating them. Quickly.

He couldn't help noticing Kairi was amongst the crowds, cheering on as bodies were dragged from buildings, with a rather bemused looking Roxas at her side. Sora growled at this sight and kicked a crumpled can along the ground.

How dare _his_ girlfriend schmooze around with that _bozo_? How dare his girlfriend cheat on him and see date his own fucking cousin shamefully behind his back? No, it wasn't even BEHIND HIS BACK, it was right in front of his fact, RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT, ONLY A FEW FUCKING CENTIMETRES AWAY THEY WERE LAUGHING AND CONVERSING AND HOLDING HANDS! Well, they weren't holding hands to be exact, but they were being pretty damned well friendly. And, well, it was true that were very close to each other, but it was also true they were trapped together in a small confined space with crowds moving around them, pressing down left right and centre.

It _wasn't fair_. If Roxas hadn't come over to his school – **his** school – and barged in, straight through the wall and not even bothering to knock, Sora would've been the one stood there with Kairi. And if he wasn't, then Kairi would have been faithful and not gone at all.

He frowned, making some rough plans in his mind to stab Roxas, grab a Tropicarna and then maybe go to the cinema with Kairi. In no exact order.

"Hello, honey!" Belle greeted her son as soon as he opened the door the tiniest crack. Belle, the 'perfect housewife', with her hair done up all high on her head and pretty in a blue cloth with a white apron tied around her waist, enveloped her son in a crushing hug that ground his bones together. "I heard about the earthquake… Hit your school bad, did it honey?"

"I'm _fine_," hissed Sora in his vile mood, pushing away from 'mummy dearest'. He scowled, arranging his hair so it hung at trademark Sora angle – a.k.a 'rakish'. He didn't want to drown in the arms of his mother, didn't want to be smothered in honey and drowning in sugar. "I look fine, don't I?"

"You have a fever! You're warm!" cried Belle in alarm, bustling around, attempting to play at being a perfect mother. She tried so hard it was embarrassing, and sort of hurt Sora… Couldn't she be happy with what she had? Make-do-and-mend? Wasn't he, Sora, good enough for her? Why did she insist on attempting to mutate her kid with daily doses of calpol? Did she think the medicine would fix something about him? Were his eyes too blue or close together, hair too 'rakish'?

Sora remembered when he was little he secretly wished he had Roxas' family.

And … maybe he still did?

Or at least, he used to, until Belle poisoned Meg's mind and forced her into thinking a perfect, whacked-on-steroids-and-calpol family was the way to go.

"What flavour calpol do you want, Sora?"

"I don't want any. I'm NOT SICK!"

"But you endured such _terrible _hardships. An earthquake! What flavour? Or maybe you'd prefer some lemon and sugar mixture? You know? It helps with colds-"

Sora was practically pulling fistfuls of his lovely chocolate brown spikes out as Belle continued rambling on, listing strange home-made remedies. She'd be getting onto the witch hazel next, and healing herbs. I mean, come on, LEAVE THE HERBS OUT OF THIS! What did the _herbs_ do to anyone?

"**LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!!**" screeched Sora horribly, charging upstairs and slamming the door shut so loudly the whole house echoed with the after-shock.

The bottles in the medicine cabinet downstairs shook, as Belle sniffed softly, pondering thoughts of her little boy growing up and turning into … Marluxia. Drama Queen.

She don't her little boy to mingle with Roxas's family, she didn't want them to live in the same places. Continents, oceans, _galaxies_ apart wasn't apart enough for Belle – she'd never be far away enough from Meg. Never stop walking in her shadow.

All he had was her family, and even that was unstable ground. If only she could wrap Sora in bubble wrap forever and preserve his young, good-natured spirit… She missed her sweet little boy…

Tears filled Belle's eyes, as she rested her head wearily against the medicine cabinet.

"_God, they grow up too fast…_"

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Roxas was looking forward to going home after an exhausting day of hiding behind desks and being threatened by people with muskets and earthquakes.

So, he was only the _slightest_ bit – oh, how shall we put this – _pissed off_ when he came home to find out he didn't actually have a home anymore. More like a drenched pile of bricks surrounded by a field of mud.

"Hercules… What happened?" asked Roxas slowly, looking around at the wreckage that he had (once upon a time, about five hours ago) been able to call home.

The man stood in the garden grinned sheepishly as he attempted to scratch a sore spot on his back with a chisel. Ah … That was probably one of the weapons of destruction that helped the house look like it how it currently did.

Hercules smiled brightly as the chisel pulled a lump of skin of his back. "Heh… Actually, that was quite painful…"

"Did you do DIY again? Without Meg in the house?" asked Mindy, raising an eyebrow.

"Maybe I did and maybe I didn't."

"But the fact remains that you _did_," said Rikku bluntly.

"Yes. I did."

"And… Elaborate?" asked Roxas.

"I was trying to fix the toilet because it kept spewing up colourful gunge when I tried flushing it that stung my eyes. So I tried to get a look at the back of it to see how well it was … ah … connected, connected, yes, and then I sort of swung my big hammer and the whole toilet can unconnected to the wall and I was shot backwards about fifty feet by a vicious jet of water that engulfed the house, taking all our possessions with it."

"Where's Marly?" asked Naminé with wide eyes, attempting to hide from the crazy man with swirly eyes that swaggered around in front of her. He seemed pleased with himself. He had destroyed many things and may or may not have killed Meg and Marly in the process.

"He's with Larxene and Megara went to went to buy me a new big hammer from the DIY store because I believe I broke this one smashing the toilet apart with it."

Everybody knew that Meg had not gone to get him another 'big hammer' (they didn't need him hacking holes in the walls of their bedrooms to create lovely balconies minus the balcony and plus a long dropt to their deaths) but had gone to the chemist's to get some of those nice orange-flavoured pills he liked to take when his brain took over.

"Dad, where are going to sleep?" asked Rikku.

"IN THE TENTS IN THE GARDEN!" roared Hercules merrily, gesturing to a large patch of soil behind him, some tents billowing away merrily in the breeze in the background. They had obviously uprooted themselves, deciding on the spur of the moment to start '_breakin' free, sorain', flyin', there's not a star in heaven they can't reach'_.

"Er… Herc…" said Roxas, pointing at the tents that were flying away, across the hill and over the bridge and past the state border.

Hercules turned around, and his happy smile instantly faded.

"Oh … Oh dear… Well kids, it looks like you'll all be livin' in a box for tonight, unless you can go to one of your little chum's houses, which I really hope you can do because there's fuck all you can do down here," he said merrily, running off after the renegade tents.

And they never saw him again.

…

Actually, they did, but they were all wishing they'd never see him again.

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

**A/N: **_Hehehe._

_Well…_

_Avast!_

_Read the crazy chapter now._

_IF YOU CAN HANDLE THE CRAZINESS!_


	6. Re:C4: a word from dj cid

**Author/s:** Skitts is writing this with Lamatikah –fifty-eight fingered salute-

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.

**Disclaimer:** I LIKE SUGAR! Just thought you might want to know...

* * *

F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_--**ALTERNTIVE **Chapter 4**—**_

**_x_-_A Word from DJ Cid_-_x_**

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

The next day's assembly was taken by a half-inflated balloon with a happy smiley face doodled on that was meant to resemble Cid, a broom stick and a tape recorder that spat sparks at everyone and played: '_yo what is up?_' over and over again.

The thing constructed out of the balloon, broomstick and tape recorder was eventually wheeled away as it was disturbing several of the little ones on the floor at the front.

Cid was still in hospital, obviously – the real one, not the pink balloon.

"I hope we learned a lot from our knowledgeable headmaster, Cid. We hope his grand inspiring words will resonate in your hearts and minds for years to come," said one of the very many un-named teachers.

Roxas didn't know about his 'grand' words of wisdom resonating in his heart, but they were sure resonating in his _ears_. Now, whenever Rikku stopped talking and Mindy stopped plotting and Naminé stopped drawing and Hercules stopped blowing up toilets and he was finally able to get some peace and quiet those 'words of wisdom' would come back to haunt him.

"_Yo, what is up? Yo, what is up?_" taunted the crackly voice of Cid in his mind… Over and over… And getting progressively louder and louder, until it rang through the hall and Roxas had to clamp his hands over his ears. As did everybody else, and the boy soon realised the chorus of '_yo, what is up_'s had not been coming from his head and spilling out of his ears for all to hear and he was, thankfully, not a human jukebox. No, the voice was coming from the staffroom the Cid-on-Wheels had previously been shoved into by Goofy and a weird inanimate Physics teacher.

"_YO, WHAT IS UP?! YOOOOOO WHATTTTTT ISSSSSS _UPPPP_-_**MKAAA,MAADI9EIWOTISUOLORreadlamatikah'sstoriesPWEOsubliminalmessagesrulllllezHWUPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!**"

Everybody knew what was coming next – the Cid-on-Wheels was obviously going berserk, as shouts and screams and yelps of terror could be heard from the staffroom, five teachers leaping Indiana Jones style out of the staffroom, as it exploded around them in dark red, crimson, orange, yellow, orange, black and mostly orange clouds.

**BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!**

A simultaneous cheer went through the hall, as Jane and Neil, who had conveniently been waiting outside the hall for such a disaster to happen, took the loud cheering and explosions to be their cue to enter and remove the charred corpses from view of the second graders.

Roxas raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Kairi.

"Ignore the Cid replacement – something like that always happens when Cid gets injured. Miss made the dolly in art made because we realised, due to our never-ending tab at the local hospital, we have no money to hire replacement teachers, or fix numerous holes in the floor or walls. So we use that. Pretty convincing, huh? It had me fooled the first time I saw it…"

"…"

"Until it went crazy and tried to pop its own head whilst chasing the German teacher around the school with an egg-whisk."

"Oh. I see."

"Yeah. Pretty neat, huh?"

"Hey, Kairi…"

"Hmn?"

"If you had no money how did you afford to buy the tape recorder?"

"We didn't."

"What, you stole it?"

Kairi tapped the side of her nose knowingly and grinned, giving a conspiratorial wink.

"Really?"

"No, we didn't. Riku found it. On the shelf of a DIY store. And it accidentally fell into his pocket and he took it to school and then Cid confiscated it."

"Really?"

"Yep. Tis all true – apart from the fact I missed out the cheese, asparagus and the dancing mice."

"I won't ask further."

"I think it's better for your sanity if you didn't," said Kairi serenely, watching as Goofy was torn apart and placed carefully on top of the Jenga pile of human body parts, limb by limb.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"Good news kids!" cried their new form tutor, Mr. Duck. He was irregularly short and wore a blue hat and a blue shirt and a pair of yellow flippers. He was obviously one of those teachers who hated his job, as he kept glancing out of the window, looking at the local hospital with a pained expression on his face, as if feeling every needle the nice doctors angrily stabbed into the hide of Goofy, trying to piece him back together. Donald obviously wished they'd hurry up and make him all nice and well and in one piece again, ready and fit for teaching.

Roxas sometimes wondered about the insanely happy and non-sensical universe he lived in, where no matter how often you spent all night in a holly bush in car park, got crushed by ten tonne bookcases or got ripped apart limb from limb you were usually perfectly okay again in a few seconds, up and 'AT THEM!' and ready to go, despite the fact your eyes may sting and your shield of steel may do nothing to deflect the two-thousand-metre high wall of acid cascading down towards you. He wondered for a bit, then 'meh'd for a bit, shook his head and glanced down at his desk. It had to be karma – maybe everybody in Destiny Islands were so nice and sweet and good-as-gold the circle of life took a kind shine upon them, just like it did to Rikku, and made them all invincible, like Tom and Jerry. It was just Roxas who would ever actually be in _pain_ if he got blown up – everybody else was made of rubber. It was the only logical explanation.

"Our good friend, the almighty Cid dummy, has managed to be rebuilt… Somehow… And in a few short seconds this classroom will be permanently hooked up to DJ Cid until the real Cid is sewn back together!" declared the duckish Mr. Duck, as he pointed towards the speaker on the wall, that decided to crackle into life about two seconds after Mr. Duck closed his beak… Mouth…

"_Yo, what is up? Yo, what is up?_" the intercom asked. Over and over. And over and over. And just for variety, OVER AND OVER. For, it was the evil thing that would never shut up and was only there for a few cheap laughs until the novelty wore off and everybody was willing to stab themselves in the eyes with the plastic spoons that bred in the canteen.

"Sirrrrrr…" moaned Sora, his hands clapped resolutely around his ears and a pained expression on his face. Nobody liked this 'DJ Cid' character that much, apart from Wakka, who was bobbing his head to some imaginary Bohemian beat, waving his arms around like a rapper and succeeding in poking the kid sat next to him in the eye. The unnamed kid turned to glare at him, but stopped as his eyes hit Wakka's and he was under his spell. Poor kid – he'd be the next one forced to kiss the ground Wakka walked on and the one to dye his hair orange.

"What, Sora?" asked Mr. Duck, who was busy writing … something … on the board, tapping his foot to the 'funky' beats of DJ Cid, attempting to 'get down and hang with da kids'.

"Can we turn our good 'pal' DJ. Cid off now?" he moaned, attempting top 'get up and groovy with da teachers'.

"No, Sora, we cannot."

A string of groans went through the room, the hallway, the entire school, as each kid in their class was met with that horrible, fateful news.

"Why not?" chorused about a dozen children from each grade's separate class at the same time. It was Sora who spoke up for the ninth graders.

"Because we have no idea how to turn DJ Cid off. Only the real Cid has the password to turn the recording off, without blowing it up."

"Can we blow it up then?"

"No."

"Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww."

The sounds of about a million '_awwwwwwwwwwww_s' echoed around the school.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Axel stared at the intercom. Axel stared at the intercom and grimaced. Axel stared at the intercom and grimaced, growling slightly.

Rikku slowly patted his back from her seat next to him. Axel looked round to see Rikku grinning happily, "What's the matter, Axie? She asked, as Axel buried his face in his hands.

"My supposed 'girlfriend' is a) sitting next to Leon, and b) flirting with Leon… and I think DJ Cid has killed my brain… CAN YOU SEE MY BRAIN, RIKKU? CAN'T YOU SEE IT SPILL OUT OF MY EARS AND NOSE?!?!" Axel shouted, his fists clenched to keep him from punching something, and his face inches away from Rikku's.

Rikku sucked in a deep breath, "Well… Axel… You know… Yuffie could say the something of a similar nature, except replacing 'girlfriend' with 'boyfriend' and 'Leon' with 'Rikku'…" Axel giggled slightly before turning back to Rikku.

"But… she doesn't _love_ Leon, not like I _love_ you, Rikku!!" Rikku giggled nervously as she backed carefully away from Axel who seemed to be leaning in closer and closer with a maniacal twitch in his eye.

**BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!**

More cries of: "Oh no! Not again!" came from the intercom as any romantic scenes could have been playing, ones which included that restaurant where the food is great, but the music sucks, were destroyed.

DJ Cid heralded chaos, especially once armed with an egg-whisk and multiple teacher limbs.

How this is possible, no one was to know.

Axel jerked his head away from Rikku's as the creature stampeded through the classroom as several teachers ran through to help them. It all ended in death.

And numerous injuries.

Rikku jumped back and edged against the wall, carefully monitoring the progress the damned machine made.

Whereas Leon was trying to flirt, whilst ignoring the oh-so-true fact that the desk before him was currently under going renovation – 'I SAW YOU IN HALF WITH EGG-WHISK!' sort of renovation that is. The sort Hercules often employed to fix the toilet with. It always ended in tragedy.

"Hey, Yuffie, I bet I know why DJ Cid always goes to our class first!" Yuffie bit her lip and looked as DJ Cid sliced another student down with its unbeatable (no pun intended) egg-whisk. She had been a good friend.

"Why…?"

"Because he's so attracted by your pretty face!"

"What… so are you… are you possibly suggesting that … that _thing_ is my 'perfect date'?" Leon's brain suddenly switched to 'OMG! CANNOT LET HER KNOW I HAFF CRUSHHH ON HERRR!'-mode.

Leon looked round with shifty eyes, "Yes. Because I don't have a crush on you… If I did… then STRIKE ME DOWN WITH A DJ CI-"

A loud 'ZJVING' was heard before Yuffie gasped and looked down at the soon-to-be corpse on the floor, "Oh my God! Leon, are you alright?"

A weak word was her reply, "No…"

Suddenly another loud 'ZJVING' was heard, and suddenly Rikku, having jumped from off the table was in Axel's arms and he was running round with her in his arms, bridal style, as a DJ Cid with a lust for some sort of 'revenge' he never knew came after them.

"Axel… keep… running… Don't… stop… now… GET… OUT… THE… SCHOOL… GODAMMIT…" Axel rushed out of the room, grabbing Yuffie as he left. DJ Cid eventually gave up on them after running out of some sort of imaginary breath that he never had…. Kinda like that revenge it never had.

They ran into what seemed to be an empty classroom. However, this was not an 'empty classroom' as a few bullets hit the wall.

"WOAH! It's me, Axel! Got it memorized?" The teacher nodded and motioned with his head as though to tell them to 'sit down and shut up'. All the kids were waving little white flags and lying bored under flipped up tables, as though in some sort of very real and very dramatic manga… however, when you thought about it, it was rather ridiculous. Well, the Milky Way of the 'Paris' moon was rather ridiculous, but people still lived there. Well… actually, they died… But that's not the point…

Axel tripped over something soft and cushiony, most likely a student. Rikku went flying and landed somewhere near some chairs. Yuffie had already run for shelter, the smart girl. And now that Axel had been sent flying, he was now laying on something even softer and cushionier than the other student he'd tripped over.

Axel sighed deeply, and laid his head back on the student, enjoying his domination since he was probably older.

"Hey! Get off my nose!" came a smuffled, indignant squeak. Axel laughed and raised his head.

"Hey, kid, what's your name?" he asked, perhaps a little tauntingly.

"My name is DJ Cid." The kid replied, Axel jumped up and started waving his hands about wildly. The kid laughed, "Relax! Seriously, you really think I'm DJ Cid?" Axel gave a muffled squeak for a positive. 'DJ Cid' laughed again, and covered Axel's mouth before the boy started screaming bloody murder, "Hey! Hey, calm down! My name's Roxas. I'm… I'm Rikku's… friend… you know… erm… like a little friend, I don't mean anything to her. You know, I'm like the little kid that she rests her elbow on, or some lemonade… or something… right?" Axel nodded slowly.

Roxas yawned as he heard a whole load of deep breathing around him. He laid his head on the softest thing close by, and started to fall asleep.

About half an hour later, after much reshuffling from the older kids (apart from Axel who found escape rather impossible) as the children, excluding Rikku, Yuffie and Axel, fell into deep slumber, a sound which very much sounded like '_fresh meat_' was coming from outside. Axel was in a very uncomfortable position, with Roxas laying on his chest, and Rikku and Yuffie sprawled either side of him, trying to hold onto something solid that wouldn't try to beat (excuse the pun… again) them up with an egg-whisk.

Rikku had Roxas's legs laid over hers as she rested her head on Axel's shoulder, trying to get to sleep; it was the only thing possible. Yuffie was almost on Axel's lap, except that was impossible because Roxas was taking over Axel at that moment, so Yuffie was being degraded to lowly 'friend' by some grade niner. But she didn't really care, as long as she had something to cling to, she was happy.

All the more, the scene could have been described as 'peaceful' except for the fact that DJ Cid had taken that very moment to storm through both walls, not seeing the kids, and Mr. Duck not being bothered to use his gun to shoot the damned thing before it reached the kindergartens. DJ Cid didn't even bother to use the door. How rude.

"Er, sir, he's gone into the Kindergartener's classroom…" Axel pointed out.

"So he has, so he has."

"So shouldn't we try to save them?"

"Nope. They're probably long gone now," said Mr. Duck, turning to look at the hole in the wall. A small arm extended from it with a weak cry of 'help meeeee', before the arm was dragged backwards through the hole, a few bones spat back out in replacement of the arm.

And Rikku had just about to get to sleep as well.

This did not matter though, as a few seconds later, she did.

Axel patted her head and looked to Yuffie who was clutching onto Axel's arms, her face white. Axel kissed her forehead, and immediately regretted this as Mr. Duck suddenly appeared from … somewhere to tell Axel that: "Any action towards any other peer which is a sign of more than friendship is a detention punishment!"

Axel squeaked, "What?! But we could've _died_!" Mr. Duck '--'ed and turned back round to face the blood stained blackboard. Boy, he really needed to sort out _where_ fake blood goes when being used in drama.

He looked back at the sleeping children, and by now Axel was asleep too. Yuffie was sobbing quietly into his shoulder.

"Well guys! I guess you're all ready and perky for a good, nice, _bracing_ ALGEBRA test!" Suspiciously, Yuffie suddenly fell asleep. Why… back in his day… they didn't have DJ Cids for one thing… or Milky Ways of the Paris moon. No, no, they had DJ DiZs and Galaxies of the Engerland suns.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

The DJ Cid was still running rampant outside the school, as Roxas had awoken to find he was lying on top of a tall red-headed boy named after some … car part … with his head buried in his chest. Shrugging off the memories of awaking in such a strange position, he had managed to find Kairi's hand amongst the scattered piles of limbs (some of them broken) and dragged her up from her happy little sleep.

"R-Roxas? Nnngh… Whas' … Whasswrong?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

"Dude. The DJ Cid stormed the school."

"Oh yeah. It'll do that when it finds its way into the cafeteria and steals one of the egg whisks. Once it gets an egg whisk in its … clutches … it is pretty much unstoppable and you should go hide under a table World War II Style under the danger has passed."

"How come nobody _reports_ this?"

"Because DJ Cid knows all and sees all and if you do that he will be paying a happy little visit to your house tonight, wired up to an incendiary bomb holding several sticks of dynamite."

"Oh… How does it _carry_ all that stuff? Let's put this entire ludicrous situation into perspective – it's a half-inflated balloon attached to a mop on wheels. It has no hands."

Kairi shrugged. "Living here makes the word 'ludicrous' seem like a 'ludicrous' word. Nothing is ludicrous if you've been stalked through your own school a couple of times by a murderous mop called DJ Cid…"

"Do you want to go and see what the DJ Cid's doing?" asked Roxas, holding his hand out to her.

Kairi laughed and placed her own palm in his willingly, as they ran out of the bombsite previously known as 'class nine', to take a look at the damage the DJ Cid was doing out in the streets and maybe laugh at it a little, until it grew annoyed and came after them with the egg beater aloft. That would be their cue to run for cover.

Life was good.

Getting beaten (excuse the WITTY pun) around by a mop with an egg-beater had to be on the 'top ten best way of making friends' list. And if it wasn't Roxas would write in to the author of such a book with such a title, if such a book with such a title existed, and complain.

People deserved to know the truth.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Sora was depressed.

He had stuck around about an hour extra at the end of the day to watch the DJ Cid chase a few people around and up trees until it grew a bit tired of that and let itself be hit by a car. And, amongst the crowds of cheering spectators egging the DJ Cid, the car and the random French people in the background on, were none other than Kairi and Roxas. Yeah, _that_ Kairi and _that_ Roxas, his girlfriend and his freaky cousin, the pretty ugly girl and the emo – just like all the old high school movies that he and Kairi had watched in the cinema and scorned loudly and violently until they were asked very politely to just get up and leave the cinema.

He didn't _want_ Roxas to be with Kairi. It would lower his reputation and raise Roxas' through the roof, because all the kids would be saying Roxas could get _any_ girl he wanted, even the geek girlfriend of his cousin, Mr. Muchios-Coolios Baggy-Pantios McGee. Not that was Sora's real name – if it were he would be dead now. Dead and stuck on top of the school flagpole, where kids could throw rocks at him.

Mr. Muchios-Coolios Baggy-Pantios McGee frowned as he crossed the road to his rather normal house, in a rather normal neighbourhood, the one that was a block away from the freaky neighbourhood his school was at. That was why Belle had never realised that he went to such a … _unique_ school. Because the DJ Cid was restricted only to freaky neighbourhood, and if it crossed into the neighbourhood that vaguely resembled real life the entire order of the earth would be torn asunder and the DJ Cid would melt in the clash of ludicrousness versus sensibility.

He was _plotting, _plotting for a way to tear Roxas from Kairi and ruin his life forever. He would do it if it were the last thing he'd ever do, or his name wasn't Mr. Muchios-Coolios Baggy-Pantios McGee.

Which, as I believed I have already told you, it was not.

"Hey, Belle," said Sora in a rather flat sort of voice, as he let himself into the house, letting her know he wasn't a burglar.

"Sora, did you have a good day at school today?"

"It was pretty … average…"

"Anything … unusual happen?"

"Same old, same old," replied Sora lazily, as he threw his schoolbag down onto the beige carpet, before immediately picking it up again. He didn't want Belle to notice it was covered in blood, and didn't want to get the bloodstains of his fellow classmates smeared onto the carpet, either.

The (sort of) funny thing was Belle _really_ wanted a normal family, normal friends, and a normal life. A normal school for her normal little boy is what she desired, not some mad-house where creatures called DJ Cids lurked in every dark corner.

Of course, nothing was normal in her life. She was desperately trying to kid herself everything was perfect and normal but she forgot how to play that game properly a long time ago and everything was falling down around her.

She had a relation called Oogie Boogie. She had relations called Scar, the Horned King and the Mayor. The mere names of all the members of their rather extended family were enough to point out to anybody that their life was anything but normal.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Roxas was looking forward to going home after an exhausting day of schoolwork and sleeping and running away from demonic balloons taped to broomsticks on wheels.

So, he was only the _slightest_ bit – oh, how shall we put this – _pissed off_ when he came home to find out he didn't actually have a home anymore. More like a drenched pile of bricks surrounded by a field of mud.

"Hercules… What happened?" asked Roxas slowly, looking around at the wreckage that he had (once upon a time, about five hours ago) been able to call home.

The man stood in the garden grinned sheepishly as he attempted to scratch a sore spot on his back with a chisel. Ah … That was probably one of the weapons of destruction that helped the house look like it how it currently did.

Hercules smiled brightly as the chisel pulled a lump of skin of his back. "Heh… Actually, that was quite painful…"

"Did you do DIY again? Without Meg in the house?" asked Mindy, raising an eyebrow.

"Maybe I did and maybe I didn't."

"But the fact remains that you _did_," said Rikku bluntly.

"Yes. I did."

"And… Elaborate?" asked Roxas.

"I was trying to fix the toilet because it kept spewing up colourful gunge when I tried flushing it that stung my eyes. So I tried to get a look at the back of it to see how well it was … ah … connected, connected, yes, and then I sort of swung my big hammer and the whole toilet can unconnected to the wall and I was shot backwards about fifty feet by a vicious jet of water that engulfed the house, taking all our possessions with it."

"Where's Marly?" asked Naminé with wide eyes, attempting to hide from the crazy man with swirly eyes that swaggered around in front of her. He seemed pleased with himself. He had destroyed many things and may or may not have killed Meg and Marly in the process.

"Marly's with Larxene and Megara went to went to buy me a new big hammer from the DIY store because I believe I broke this one smashing the toilet apart with it."

Everybody knew that Meg had not gone to get him another 'big hammer' (they didn't need him hacking holes in the walls of their bedrooms to create lovely balconies minus the balcony and plus a long dropt to their deaths) but had gone to the chemist's to get some of those nice orange-flavoured pills he liked to take when his brain took over.

"Dad, where are going to sleep?" asked Rikku.

"IN THE TENTS IN THE GARDEN!" roared Hercules merrily, gesturing to a large patch of soil behind him, some tents billowing away merrily in the breeze in the background. They had obviously uprooted themselves, deciding on the spur of the moment to start '_breakin' free, sorain', flyin', there's not a star in heaven they can't reach'_.

"Er… Herc…" said Roxas, pointing at the tents that were flying away, across the hill and over the bridge and past the state border.

Hercules turned around, and his happy smile instantly faded.

"Oh … Oh dear… Well kids, it looks like you'll all be livin' in a box for tonight, unless you can go to one of your little chum's houses, which I really hope you can do because there's fuck all you can do down here," he said merrily, running off after the renegade tents.

And they never saw him again.

…

Actually, they did, but they were all wishing they'd never see him again.

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

**A/N:**_ Welldone! You gots through the CRAP!_

_We expect reviews for this 'crap' y'know – tis like HIGH QUALITY writing…_

_Three reviews for an uppdatter?_


	7. C5: invitation to hell

**Author/s:** Skitts (who is dancing like a Scootish person) and Lamatikah (who owns a hat. And is very proud of her hat… otherwise known as R-Chan – we're not sure whether she's talking about the hat or herself…) –sixty-seven fingered salute-

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.

**Disclaimer:** PHYCHE!

F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_**--**Chapter 5**—**_

**_x_-_Inv_i_ta_ti_on _t_o He_ll-_x_**

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"_Sora?_" a creased up voice crackled down the telephone wires separating him and his cousin. Sora sighed. Roxas seemed to be getting along a little too well with Kairi. And it upset Sora, even though he could just as well play video games with Riku, but it wasn't the same as being able to kiss him whenever he felt like it… because that would just be silly. Because, like mummy said: Boys who like boys are silly.

That's why she didn't like Sora's other cousin.

"Yes?"

"_Sora, can you tell me where Kairi lives please… or her phone number…? Hercules killed the house, and I need somewhere to stay, and since you're house is out of the option and all the hotels here are crap… well, Kairi was my only other option…_" Sora saw reason in this. And it helped him seek a new light in his cousin.

"Sure! It's 13 Papou Drive. That help?″ Sora asked. Roxas nodded and quickly mumbled 'yeah, thanks' before Sora thought he was giving him the 'cold shoulder' because Sora was sensitive like that.

Sora put the phone back down on its hook. He turned round. And then turned back round to the phone.

He had a devillish plan up his sleeve.

But first: Pizza!

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Roxas knocked on Kairi's door, lingering on the doorstep, he wasn't sure if he was worthy of the almighty doorstep belonging to Kairi and whoever else she lived with. Her family was obviously a lot better than his, because she acted normal, perhaps a little boffy, but still normal. And Roxas acted emo. And according to this day and age, emos should be shunned! SHUNNED I TELLS YA!

The door creaked open, and Roxas blushed as Kairi appeared with just a towel on. She looked down to see who was there, and on seeing Roxas gave a short squeak before trying to cover herself up a bit more. She held out one finger, meaning, 'one minute'.

Roxas lingered on the doorstep some more, waiting for the girl to come out, ready. Not with just a towel on. Why did people do that anyway?

'Cuz, if _anyone_ came to the door, and you just had a towel on, would you only squeal if it was your friend, who happened to be a boy.

After a while, Kairi came back down with some jeans on, and a back to front shirt. She beckoned Roxas inside and up the stairs.

"Kai? Kairi?! Who's there?" Kairi looked down, and tried to look through into the living room, maybe she'd see this mysterious shouter.

"It's Roxie! Is that okay?" A short 'eh' was heard from the living room before a red-headed man came out, his hair in a pony tail and some goggles attached to his forehead.

"As long as he won't throw any deadly soap at choo, I'm fine!" Kairi smiled.

"Okay, dad!" she hollered back as the man retreated into the living room yet again.

Kairi led Roxas to her room, it was small, but pretty, it contained a TV, a computer, a bed and a wardrobe. Multi-coloured streaks patterned the otherwise blank walls, as Kairi ushered Roxas onto her bed to sit.

"Roxie, what's up?" she asked, carefully pressing the bandage on her forehead and rubbing it slightly. Roxas smiled. He remembered the first time he'd seen her.

Screaming in agony on the floor, screeching about evil things like Wakka's and DJ Cid's and EVIL SOAP!

"Well… my dad… he sort of like… flooded the house… and we either move out, to somewhere else in Destiny Islands, or we renovate it… whichever is cheaper. And so, like, tonight, I don't have anywhere to stay… and I was kinda… well… I was kinda hoping I could stay at your house, because I haven't really made any other friends at school yet…" Kairi giggled and bashed him on the arm softly.

"'Course, I'll just ask Reno…" she told him, as she skipped to her bedroom door, "DAD! ROXIE DOESN'T HAVE ANYWHERE TO STAY TONIGHT, SO CAN HE STAY HERE?!" she hollered. Roxas could hear a faint cry come from downstairs, "THANK YOU, DADDY!!" Kairi shouted back.

Roxas sat nervously, perched on the end of Kairi's bed.

Kairi turned towards him, and sat back down next to him, "He says you can, as long as you don't sleep in the same bed as me. But, I'm sure you figured that out ages ago!" she laughed. Roxas 'heh'ed but did nothing more; he was so damn tired, after asking Sora where Kairi lived, Roxas realised that he'd have to actually _find_ Papou Drive… And that took a good of half hour of asking ladies where it was, and about two hours of actual walking. "So… Roxas… do you actually have anything to change into or… whatever?" asked Kairi, out of mere wonder.

"No… When Hercules killed the house, he killed the stuff too. And the insurance company says we're on our last loan."

Kairi curved her mouth into an 'o' shape and flipped over onto her tummy. Her wet hair dripped in puddles onto her bluey-gray bed. She sighed, and flipped over again. "You know what, I'm gonna go and get the spare bed… Be back in a second, Roxie!" Roxas laughed, Kairi was already calling him 'Roxie'. Only Selphie… and Meg… and Rikku on occasions called him 'Roxie'. Although, now all the people who called him 'Roxie' were hated by Roxas now, Roxas knew that he didn't hate Kairi. Not. At. All.

Soon enough, Kairi came back with a mattress like … thing. She laid it on the floor next to her bed.

"Well… at least I'll have something soft to land on if I fall off…" Kairi muttered. She seemed a little depressed for some reason. Roxas raised his head slightly. He wondered what she was talking about. Or, maybe he didn't want to know.

She smiled as she came back in the room with a blanket and a pillow. Roxas smiled back, a little sheepishly.

"That up to your standards, Roxie?" Roxas laughed.

"If only you knew what 'my standards' are! I think dad's running out there looking for the fly-away tents now. Either that, or he's in a cardboard box/trash can at the moment!" Kairi laughed.

She stared out of the window and laughed in wonderment. A crazy guy seemed to be chasing after a tent blowing away in the wind, "Heh… What a jerk…" she mumbled. Roxas leaned over her shoulder to see what she was talking about. He couldn't help but laugh when he saw that random crazy guy ru- wait… that was Hercules… Better not tell Kairi about this… "Wonder who he is…"

"Yeah…" shifty-eyed Roxas, "Yeah… so do I…"

Kairi giggled before closing her curtains, "Hey, I know what we can do!" Roxas blinked. Kairi whirled round him towards her wardrobe.

This brought memories back… Oh memories… Oh horrible memories…

"_Hey I know what we can do!" Roxas blinked. Selphie grinned, and walked round towards the wardrobe._

Roxas shuddered.

Kairi pulled out a couple of drawers from the bottom of her wardrobe. Roxas hoped to God that they didn't contain any yellow sundresses, or hair curlers… or _anything_ like that. Of course, the eye shadow hadn't been that bad – it brought out his beautiful big blue eyes, according to Selphie. And, according to Zidane, it made him look like a common tart. But that didn't stop him being flirtatious before he found out that he was actually Roxas, in disguise…

Kairi placed the drawers on the mattress and showed the contents to Roxas. He gazed at the colourful inside.

"Truth or Dare…" he muttered, almost inaudibly. Kairi nodded, wistfully. The most hated game, and yet, still the most popular. Well, apart from spin the bottle… Although, when he played spin the bottle back home with Selphie and a few other assorted people they forced into it at broken-glass-bottle-point, if you refused to kiss the person it landed on you'd yet again be forced into it at broken-glass-bottle-point, and more often than not whacked over the head with a broken glass bottle. It was all Selphie's work. It was all that conniving little girl's fault that Zidane's brain cells were constantly trickling out of his ears ever since that fateful day when he refused to kiss Roxas.

"You ready, Roxie?" she asked, a malevolent spark in her eyes. Roxas gulped, and nodded. Hopefully Kairi wasn't into the whole 'bash people over the heads with broken glass bottles' hullabalooza. Although they were not playing 'spin the bottle', but she could always force him to complete a dare with a broken glass bottle if occasion called for it. Hopefully it never would. She grinned. "Okay, take out the red cards and arrange them on this board…" she explained, pulling out a board from another drawer. She carried on explaining until everything was set up.

Roxas sat cross-legged, waiting for Kairi to tell him when to hold his breath. Whoever could hold their breath the longest got to start first. It was not the wisest course of action though, as on the news there had been a steady increase of reports about stupid people knocking themselves unconscious as they were so determined to win. Yes, they won a pounding headache, a free trip to lovely island resort called 'le hospitalle' and a five minute segment about they silly they were on the local news. Actually, that was a pretty sweet deal.

On the count of Kairi's neat little bell you could ring when playing 'The Yes/No' game, Roxas started to hold his breath. Kairi tried. She really did. But he just looked so funny. She burst out laughing before Roxas had even begun to lose breath. Roxas snorted.

"Me first!" he cried, raising his fist to punch the air. Kairi smiled, and shifted her eyes around nervously. "Okay, Kai, truth or dare?" Kairi pondered for a moment before choosing 'dare'. She took a card from the pile and read it, laughing slightly as she did so, "Kai? Kairiii… what does it sayyy?" he asked, desperately trying to see what the card said.

Kairi giggled, before reaching back over to her wardrobe, and grabbing a bra, shoving it on top of her shirt, "I'M WONDERWOMAN, SEE! MY UNDERWEAR IS _OVER_ MY CLOTHING!!"

"…"

Meanwhile, downstairs, in the lingerie… wait… I do believe I have my French wrong…

Reno sat on his sofa and pulled out another beer, watching as some guy ninja-karate chopped a weird bat-like creature with 'wings like a shield of steel'. He pondered for a moment over his daughter's outrageous statement.

"Oh well, I'm sure they're being decent, and besides; boys will be boys… and all that lark…" Reno pondered a moment on his own statement; did he just refer to his _daughter_ as a _boy_?

Back upstairs… ala bedroom (but of course –strokes French moustache-)

Kairi laughed as Roxas just stared. She pulled him back over to the game, and sat him down. "Your go, Roxie, truth or dare?" Roxas's fingers lingered over truth, before switching back to the dare pile. After about five minutes of this, his hands rested on truth and he told Kairi to pick up a card, "Well, Roxie, my darling little rock, it's asking me to ask you: Are you gay?" Roxas blinked for a moment.

Sorry for this slight pause of the jovialities for a moment, but my beret has gone askew –straightens hat- That's better, UP AND ATOM!

"No." He said, pouting slightly.

"Are you sure you're not in denial?"

"No."

UP AND AT THEM! Oh sorry… This situation does not require a page break of these sorts…

"Okay, if you're sure!" Kairi jumped up and skipped round to sit in Roxas's lap, it was as though she knew deep down that he was really gay (and this would be news to Roxas) and she was just taunting him. She was a girl and was using 'feminine wiles and feminine instincts' and could just _tell_ who was gay or not. Like The Barney-saur.

"I chose truth!" cried Kairi, as Roxas picked up a truth card. Kairi of course didn't have to have Roxas read it for her, as it was already straight in front of her, "Oh that one's easy, you!" she cried, prodding his nose. Roxas smiled, limply.

"Okay, I guess I chose dare then… Kairi, go and sit over there, I'm not having you read my dare…" Kairi stuck out her bottom lip, but did as she was told and sat opposite Roxas.

"That's mean, Roxie, why can't I read your dare? I'd find out eventually, wouldn't I? Because I'd see you do it, and that's the same as just reading it from a little piece of card you read it from, but you're just being me-"

Kairi was cut off by a pair of lips invading hers. She squirmed for a minute, before realising what had happened; Roxas had been dared to kiss someone, and the closest person had just happened to be Kairi, and Kairi, being his only friend, seemed the perfect subject to practice this dare on.

Roxas pulled back, and threw his card on the pile, "Well, I'm sure worn out. I think I'll go to sleep now, g'night…" Kairi stared blankly ahead.

"G'night…" she repeated.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Sora wanted to put this master plan into action right now, there and then, but the only minor drawback of his hastiness was that it was about two a.m. And nobody was awake at 2 a.m. apart from Chinese people, vampires and him and Riku.

"Sora, I don't _get_ why you care so much," said Riku in a lazy tone of voice, tracing patterns in his duvet. "I mean, it's not like she's _pretty_ or _special_ or _popular_ or anything… You deserve someone better, like one of the girls on the cheerleader squad…" Or me, for example. He only tacked the last part on in his mind, however, for he didn't want Sora to laugh at him mistaking it for a joke or to scream in disgust and upend the bowl of popcorn on his head.

The brunet scowled and punched the colourful duvet, making their bowl of 'nibbles' jump up in alarm. Riku was just so damned _shallow_ – didn't he see that he didn't care whether Kairi was Miss Popularity or King Billy No-Mates (both were titles to be proud of, he was sure).

"You can't _label_ Kairi. She doesn't fall into any group, she's unique, and I like her for that."

"Psh. Of course you can label Kairi – you can label anybody. And I say that Kairi falls into the category of geek. Everybody says Kairi's a geek. She's dragging down your reputation and Blitzball players just don't gel with Science Nerds. Maybe you should just let her go… It was a sweet childhood crush in Kindergarten and you'd steal her crayons and dolls to make her pay attention to you. She paid attention to you for two years; you've been going out ages. I think it's time for a change, don't you? I mean, you and Kairi are like old news. Get somebody else better; it's your big chance to climb higher up the ladder of popularity!"

"God!" cried Sora, throwing his arms up in the air in exasperation. "I'm already fucking _popular_, Riku, I don't care about gaining a few more fans in the cheerleader squad if I go out with one of them. They're all blonde brainless bimbos and they don't have two IQ points between all seven of them. I like Kairi because I can have intelligent conversation with her and what she says makes sense – her interests span out far beyond lip-gloss and shampoo."

Riku pulled a rather scandalized look and patted his sleek silver locks like a mother pats a baby. Sora didn't _mean_ what he'd said. Shampoo did have its merits and wasn't completely useless.

"So, anyway, I've got this plan to win her back. And it'll humiliate my 'lovely' cousin in the process. But I can't get the plan working without your help."

Riku didn't _want_ to help Sora with his scheming and plotting to help win back the heart of his lady love. He didn't want to, but he'd have to, wouldn't he, if he still wanted Sora to be his friend.

"Come on Riku, friends help each other out!"

"I know, but if Kairi's moved on I think you should let her go, give her some room-"

"Riku, that is the stupidest I've ever heard. Ever. Even more stupid that than Kellogg's frosties advert and that was pretty ridiculous too."

_But I don't want you to go out with Kairi !_

"But Sora, I'm just looking out of the good of both of you! Where would you be if you asked Kairi if she wanted to go out with you and she flat-out said no? It would spread around the school like wild-fire and your reputation-"

"Would plummet. So that's why I need _you_."

"But…"

And then Sora did his puppy-dog eyes.

And then all of Riku's stubborn resolve collapsed like an unset jelly and he caved in.

"Okay."

"Yay!" squealed Sora like a little kid, giving his silver-haired companion a huge hug, that squeezed the poor boy's lungs together and popped his heart in one metaphoric, painful motion. Riku knew Sora distributed hugs like a muffin man distributes muffins, and it never meant anything unless the person in his arms was a certain red-headed girl. He only gave hugs to people because everybody found him irresistible and once hugged they melted in his arms and were sort of forced to do his bidding, in the hopes of being paid by more of his famous hugs. Riku didn't _like_ being shamelessly used like this, as if he were an expendable character in some cheap play that was only there for the gains of everyone else and had no real role at all. He wanted to feel important to somebody, and not just because they needed him for some giant elaborate plot involving a llama, a sandwich and a HULASKIRT.

"So what do I have to do?"

"Nothing, mon good chappy-chap!" said Sora, flying out of his bad mood like a helium-ated balloon flies out of the clutches of a small, weepy-eyed child.

It had never occurred to Riku just how conniving Sora could be when he wanted to. Behind those beautiful blue eyes was a mind that liked screwing around with other people's brains and then leaving them stranded in deserts with vultures and tumbleweed.

"So what do you need me for?"

"You know your dad owns the town hall?"

"Yeah…"

"Could I rent it out? For the weekend?"

"Sure."

"Yay! Happy times! Happy times! Champagne, champagne for everyone!" squealed Sora happily, bouncing around on Riku's bed like a little kid.

"Sora, we have no champagne."

"POPCORN! POPCORN FOR EVERYONE!" Sora quickly corrected himself, diving off Riku's warm comfy bed and into the waiting clutches of the mattress on the floor, in all its glory.

Riku provided only the best for his friends.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

If Riku could choose the sound to wake up to early in the morning, it probably wouldn't have been his brunet companion screaming : "WAKE UP MR. POTATO-HEAD!" at the top of his lungs.

But if Riku could have chosen the sight he would most liked to have woken up to see early in the morning, Sora ranked high up there on the list, along with Wakka attached to the blades of the rotating fan on his ceiling. It was every teen's dream, and no matter how much they denied it they could not escape the fact there is no such thing as a Wakka fan-girl.

"Wha- Argh… Sora… gerrofmee…"

The brunet ignored him, grinning wildly like a Cheshire cat.

"DO YOU KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS TODAY, MR. WAFFLES?!"

"World War III?"

"NOOOOOOOO! GUESS AGAIN!"

"The day you ditch Kairi and realise that I am actually perfect for you in every way…" Riku muttered under his breath in a mad torrent of words, so soft that he knew Sora would never be able to hear him. Not with the all the din he was causing.

"I have no idea what you just said but … ah … Close enough… UP AND AT THEM! THAT'S WHAT I ALWAYS SAY!" screamed the boy, criminally hyper for so early in the morning. And he had actually managed to _dress himself_ even though the clock said it was 6 a.m. and he seemed whacked out on happy pills at the moment, which was a great accomplishment.

"Sora… I wanna go back to _sleep_," hissed Riku in his dangerous 'I-know-where-the-knives-are-in-this-house' style. It was six a.m and they had be up and ready for school in _two hours. _They had two more bloody hours! **TWO!** Why couldn't the hyper gremlin who was dancing around his room understand that? Why couldn't he leave Riku in _peace_? "Why are you up, anyway?"

"CAUSE WE'VE GOTTA PUT PART TWO OF MY EVIL AND MYSTERIOUS PLAN INTO GEAR! UP! UP! UP! UP AND AT THEM, RIKU!"

With each 'up' he whacked Riku on the head with his fist, a hollow sound ringing through the boy's room each time the fist made contact with skin.

"Alright… Alright… Awwwirghtttt..." he growled, sitting up in the traditional 'I've-just-dreamt-I've-been-chased-by-a-bin/Dalek/metal rhino' fashion, a.k.a, shooting straight up out of bed and tipping Sora off his chest to his horrible doom.

Roughly five minutes later…

Riku and Sora, fully dressed and washed and breakfasted (they had stolen several items from Riku's overflowing fruit bowl and stuffed them in their pockets) could be found making their way down the high street. Many of the stores were still closed with the metal grilles down so nobody could get in and burgle things or get out and tell people they'd been locked in the store all night. Dawn spread out across the sky in deep pinks and yellows as the egg-yolk sun continued its long path to its rightful throne in the centre of the sky, making everything look faintly eerie.

"Sora, everything's closed. We cannot just throw bricks at the glass windows of the stores, jump in and then steal the equipment necessary to get your grand plan in gear."

"We can and we _will_," Sora hissed through his teeth, the effects of early-morning hyperness slowly wearing off to reveal quite a normal little Blitzball playing boy underneath the surface.

Their trek to God-only-knows-where (and even God probably didn't understand the working of young Sora's mind) eventually ended up with both of stood outside one of the those cheap, tacky little open 24-hours-a-day stores, tucked in between a filthy alleyway complete with it's own trash can and a … pornography store…

"Sora, does your plan involve pornography?" asked Riku, his voice sounding ever-so-slightly nervous, as he tugged at his collar. He didn't want to be one pretending he was twenty and called Sephiroth just to purchase illegal pictures, no matter how much like the criminal he looked.

"Don't be stupid," said Sora, poking Riku playfully in the side, as good friends do. "I need to photocopy some things…"

"What?"

Sora pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and winked at Riku conspiratorially, before entering the store (the open 24-hours-a-day store, not the porno one).

As Sora and Riku sidled into the grotty shop, a little bell tinkled above their heads and a great big, cheesy smile greeted them. Sora grinned back.

"Hello, I was wondering: Could I please photocopy this please?" he asked, showing the guy behind the counter a piece of paper marked 'PLAN A' in big bold writing at the top and some invitation-like notices beneath. Riku shuffled up behind Sora, a little tentatively as though something would bite him if he got too close.

The guy behind the counter looked at Sora, then at the piece of paper, then at Riku, then at Sora, and then back at Riku.

"Hey! Aren't you the mayor's kid?" Riku nodded, a little sheepishly. He didn't want to be known as 'Generic Mayor's kid #1' even though he had no siblings to compare with. So, really he would not be known as 'Generic Mayor's kid #1' but just simply 'Generic Mayor's son'.

"So, yeah, he's the mayor's kid, so can we get them photocopied for free, please?" asked Sora, as though he knew what had been about to happen. Riku grunted, he didn't like being used like this, but if it made Sora happy, then it made Sora happy. And when Sora was happy, Riku was usually sad. But that wasn't the point.

The guy behind the counter simply shrugged and took the paper from Sora, "So, how many do you want?" he asked, nosily reading what was printed to the paper. Sora pondered for a moment before turning round to ask Riku how many people he wanted to come. Riku merely shrugged, but by then Sora had already noticed something else.

He walked over to the window. And his eyes narrowed. "Damn you, Roxas…" he muttered as he watched the boy limp down the street, looking almost half-dead.

Kairi jogged along side the boy, "Hey, Roxie, I just love these early morning jogs, me and Sora used to do them all the time, but then Riku would take Sora and like make him sleep, or something… But, now I've got you, so we can do these lovely runs, don't you just _love_ them?!" Roxas attempted to nod, but it wouldn't, because it would be a shameless lie. And more to the point, he had lost the energy.

"That's my run, bitch…" mumbled Sora, before turning back round to the guy behind the counter. He slapped a bright smile on his face, "I'll take seventy, thank you!"

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"Hello, Kairi," Sora smiled brightly, as he shoved Roxas out of the way with his behind and plonked himself down in the blond's previous seating place. "You don't mind if I sit here, do you?" he asked as an added after thought. As only a low string of growling met his ears, courtesy of his good cousin, he smirked and leant against the back of his seat. "Nope. Didn't think so."

"Hi, Sora," smiled Kairi blandly, looking around the assembly hall as more and more students trouped in. She wondered vaguely who would be taking assembly today, or even if they would have one at all, but still led them into the room like cattle to pasture in fear of breaking 'tradition', thus messing with their young minds. If anything out of the ordinary happened then riots may happen.

"God, I haven't spoke to you in _aggeesss_," said the boy, putting stress on the word 'aggeesss', and staring pointedly at Roxas, who was glowering at him.

"I know. Heh, but life's been pretty hectic."

"Yeah, well, I thought it would be nice if we could, you know, catch up on good times? I miss it when it was just us and we would go running…" _Cause now you do it with Roxas. I decide to spend a little more time with Riku due to Blitzball practise and then you turn traitor on me and start to go out with my weird cousin behind my back._ "So, uh, if you wanted to come I'm not, like, y'know, forcing you or anything, but it would be nice if we could talk properly again…"

Sora smiled, a genuinely sugar-sweet smile that would have melted even the stoniest of hearts, as he handed Kairi a party invitation from his schoolbag.

The girl accepted it, and read through it quickly, a small smile breaking out across her face like a case of acne. But acne has a nasty habit of making you look ugly, and Kairi's smiles made her face look anything but.

"Of course! I'd love to go! What's the occasion?"

"Who needs an occasion to hold a party?"

Kairi giggled.

"But, er, can Roxie come too?"

**Bingo.**

A demonic grin spread across Sora's features, and Kairi tilted her head like a little robin and shot him a rather '?' like look. Not that her entire face took on the space of a question mark, but he could see those little symbols dancing around in her eyes, questioning his scary smile, so he quickly flipped his expression over to 'normal'.

"Do you want to come, Roxas?" he asked, another one of his invitations in his hand.

"What's the catch?"

"No catch. I'm allowed to spend time with my favourite cousin, aren't I?"

"I thought Oogie Boogie was your favourite cousin because he taught you how to play blackjack and gave you an ant farm for Christmas."

Sora waved Roxas's rather truthful words aside and grinned. "Yeah, but you're my only cousin who's ever stuck my head down a toilet."

Kairi giggled.

Roxas quirked an eyebrow, but said no more on the subject.

Sora was plotting something, he knew that much, but going to a part might be fun, it might win him some new friends, and Kairi was currently attempting to guilt-trip him into going with her with giant puppy-dog eyes. Kairi's opinion mattered more than anybody's at the moment, and if going would make her happy then it was full steam ahead, as far as Roxas was concerned. He didn't want to hurt the feelings of his _only_ friend.

"Sure, I'll go…"

Inside, inner Sora laughed manically and did the conga.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Meanwhile, Hercules blinked, signifying that this is, in fact, the end of this chapter.

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

**A/N: **_PSYCHE!_


	8. C6: stupid ninth graders

**Author/s:** Skitts and Lamatikah –two fingered salute- (I'M PLAYING AT BEING NORMAL!)

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.

**Disclaimer:** Who owns Kingdom Hearts this day and age? Who can truthfully say that?

F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_**--**Chapter 6**—**_

**_x_-_Stupid Grade Niners_-_x_**

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Axel blinked slowly as the lamps along the road slowly, one after the other, flickered on with a near deafening 'pfft'. He could feel the heat from Rikku's palm radiate onto his as he intertwined his fingers with hers; it wasn't like they were an 'item', it was just their way of being friends. He eventually stopped at the hall before them, and looked down at the piece of paper in his left hand.

Axel read and reread it, before looking up. Rikku grinned next to him. She, so far, had been staying at Yuffie's house and was happy with that because Axel came over enough. As did Leon. Mindy had been at Lenne's house, and Shuyin had decided to stay over there as well, still with his blueprints of the sewers, always ready to strike when the moment called.

Or at least when Lenne's mother turned her back on them for at least five seconds.

Naminé had been staying over at Denzel's.

Of course, these adopted siblings weren't going to Sora's party, unlike Roxas, who knew that Sora only invited him to do something 'baaaaaad', and Rikku, who was forever trying to assure Roxas that nothing 'baaaaaad' would happen, this was over the phone of course, as they hadn't really seen much of each other for the rest of that week. Roxas stayed stubborn, and would carry onwards, pouting.

He was still staying at Kairi's and Sora was definitely getting sick of it now.

Rikku tugged at Axel's sleeve, willing him to go in.

"I still don't understand how we got dragged to a stupid grade nine party..." he muttered. Rikku flashed him a quick grin. Axel grimaced back, "And Yuffie is probably making out with Leon, right now!" He said, his voice tinted with poison.

Rikku scowled, "Now come on, Yuffie said that he was helping her with her homework, and I'm sure she's telling the truth! C'mon, I wanna go, and see Roxie. I haven't seen him for ages, what with us all living at different houses, and at school, I barely see him 'cuz he's always with Kairi. Geez... it's like he's obsessed with her or something... Well, apparently, according to Roxas over the phone, he won't even be able to hang around with her because Sora was trying to push him out of the picture..." Axel's face twisted into many different types of faces, unable to come up with something witty and sarcastic to say, Rikku just laughed and prodded him on the arm, "C'mon lazy bum! We've got a party to go to!"

Axel shrugged and followed Rikku into the hall.

Inside, there were more kids than they had first expected, and the party didn't seem to have any age restrictions. Apart from scary 20-year-old hobos (or _teachers_), almost everybody from every age group at the school seemed to milling about, separated off into groups that all seemed to radiate around Sora, all ready to suck up to the host. Riku was stood like a stupid great melon next to the host who was radiating witticism and charm. Riku, however, was _not_. Sora was being selfish and didn't want to share his airs and graces, nor did he want to share the heavy load in Riku's hands (a plate of typical party food, that people took of Riku, thanked Sora for and then wandered off, acting like the silver-haired one was simply a hat-stand).

Axel clutched Rikku's hand harder as they walked through the crowds. He was surprised at how tall some of the kids there were – some were from grade _eleven,_ imagine. They were even taller than him, which Axel had seriously thought impossible.

That Sora kid must have quite a few friends. Of course, the fact that the silly hat-stand-like creature that was handing out olives at the boy's side was the mayor's son also helped people accept invitations. They all probably thought they'd get _knighted _simply for turning up or something. Or maybe they thought the mayor's son had some sparkling charisma buried deep down inside – on both counts they were way off the mark. There were no knighting-swords lying under party tables and Riku was a bit of a let-down, compared the shining star that was Sora.

Some time later Rikku gave a short squeal and let go of Axel's hand, to run to Roxas. Axel gave a muffled whimper, and started to walk in the direction he hoped she had left in, pushing past a small collection of little self-proclaimed Sora fan girls, all 'tee-hee'ing as they scattered to let 'o tall one with volcano on head' pass.

As soon as Rikku neared Roxas, the boy gave a muffed squeak of joy and ran/walked up to her. He was unusually happy to see her. It was probably because he was all alone, with either no one he knew, or no one he wanted to know.

Sure, he'd come with Kairi, but Sora had whisked her away immediately at the door, and left him stood there, in roughly the same boat as that poor little kid handing out olives. Maybe it wasn't only Wakka that could do scary hypno mumbo-jumbo with the eyes to make everybody do his bidding. Maybe Sora could too?

"Roxie! So, how've you been?" asked Rikku, crushing Roxas with a hug. Roxas's eye twitched, before he answered.

"I've been fine. Kairi's really nice, and her dad's cool... even though he refers to Kairi as a boy more often than not... and yeah, I'm cool. You?" Rikku contemplated Roxas's speech and smiled.

"I've been great! Axel comes over like nearly _all_ the time, and Yuffie's cool, and likes sugar like I do. And Leon's okay... ish... even though his face broke on Wednesday. And loads of other kids came over, like Tidus, he's cute, and Yuna, she's cool. She looks familiar somehow too... and all sorts!" Roxas smirked, "What?" asked Rikku, seeming a little pained.

"You _liiiiiiiiiiiiike_ Axel don't you?" he asked, leaning forward as he said it. Rikku pouted.

"Do not!" she cried back in retaliation.

"Do to!"

"Do not!"

"Do to!"

"Do not!"

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Sora was being a jerk.

So far, all the way through the party, Sora had been busily shoeing Riku into the corner with a tray of olives in one hand. He obviously didn't want his 'honoured' guests to see Riku in case it ruined his reputation. He was Sora, and as a rule Sora didn't hang around dorky kids. Sure, he was the son of the mayor (not the poor deluded 'The Mayor' of course, but the actual 'the mayor') and he was richer than most of the other kids, and had somehow managed to buy his way into all the popular groups. But he wasn't popular himself – so, henceforth, all he was good at was blending into the furniture with a tray of olives.

Riku sighed, as he stared up at ceiling fixtures, the guests who mostly much taller than him, the floor – anything but in Sora and Kairi's direction.

They were going all 'lovey-dovey-smooshy-icky' on him, and Sora was paying no more heed to Riku than if he were a cauliflower. No, if he were a cauliflower, Sora would have shot him a few casual looks of disgust before dumping him in a trashcan, and so far Sora wasn't even bothering to do that. Not that Riku would fit in a trash can anyways…

"Hello, Sora!" squealed one of the random party guests, running forth from the crowd to pay her compliments to the host. "This is a great party! Me'n'Tidus are really enjoying ourselves!" she giggled, pointing at a sulky blond boy in the corner who was busy doing strict robotic hand gestures to some song, muttering 'techno, techno, techno' under his breath and hacking down any poor kid who dared get in his way with karate like hand movements. Nobody could dare disrupt his 'lovely dancing', or, to be more exact 'mad hand-waving'.

Who did he think he was? Jackie Chan?

"Hiiii-yah…" mumbled Tidus, attempting to karate chop the table in the corner with his head. It probably wouldn't have hurt Tidus that much as Sora was beginning to suspect his head was filled with air and nothing else. Apart from the odd biscuit crumb, of course.

The table however – if he attempted to slice the table apart with his hollow head, that could cause some complications… Better stop him before the punch went everywhere…

"Damn, it's happening again. He always gets excited when the music gets loud," said Yuna with an apologetic look at Sora, before running over to baby over Tidus and spank him and tell him to go stand in the corner hanging his head.

It only took about five seconds into Tidus's punishment for him to start hacking down more kiddies with his hands, to which Yuna rolled her eyes and attempted to drag him outside without her hand being severed from her arm.

Dangerous stuff, techno dancing…

Sora eyes rolled around the scene.

People were packed into every corner, all techno dancing like jerky robots that needed repairs. Techno dancing to _Dr. Jones_, no less. Oh shudder. Where was the originality? He could see it now, blowing away…

Well, there were two people at the back (two girls to be precise) who were stuck at the back. They looked vaguely familiar, he was sure he'd seen them in a book of some sort. Like maybe the Bible… Along with many other illustrious names, all claiming to be from some province called 'fafenfiction' and their even more almightier God, Tetsuya Nomura. Apparently, they were created by Tetsuya Nomura and these 'writers' on 'fafenfiction' could control whatever they did and, in one casual flick of the wrist, make Tidus attempt to split his head apart on the table.

"I'M GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE!" roared Tidus, bursting through the doors with a deafening bang, Yuna trailing after him, useless as … Yuna… "HAHAHAHA!" continued Tidus, jumping onto the table and starting to sing something about a 'Mr. Roboto', jerking his arms around.

Yuna eventually managed to pull Tidus from the table and dragged him outside with a net.

The two girls in the back laughed softly and vanished in a blur of … snow…

Riku shrugged, starting to formulate an evil plan.

He felt a bit bad – his plan would not only split Sora and Kairi apart, but Roxas would also go un-punished. And if Sora ever found out, he'd be very mad at him, and maybe they wouldn't be friends anymore…

But hopefully, Sora would be too drunk on 'alky-hol' to remember any trace of that night.

Riku smirked, as he glared at Kairi.

She was going to get her comeuppance.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Axel pushed the cup under Rikku's nose as everyone else watched the rather comical departure of Tidus, being dragged out by Yuna, his all-knowing and almighty (but of course) girlfriend. Or just friend. Or mother. Or owner. Or pet. Or Yuna. No one was really quite sure.

Rikku stared at the cup blankly.

"Me? Drink this?" she asked, her voice quavering slightly as she watched the liquid inside quiver and slosh. She laughed a little nervously as Axel nodded his head, "But, I've never ever tried it before…"

"So, now's the time to start!" he told her, flashing a grin that said quite clearly, 'I've no idea what I'm doing but you trust me, you know you do'.

Rikku gulped. And pouted slightly as she breathed out. "Well… here goes nothing…" she mumbled, her words tumbling out of her mouth before she could do anything about it. She picked up her cup and took a quick sip, very cautiously. Axel watched her carefully as she hiccoughed.

And again.

And again.

And again and again.

"Axel…" she murmured. Axel nodded, still watching her carefully, "Axel, I feel … funny…" Axel smiled.

"Keep drinking… you'll feel funnier…" he urged her to keep drinking. He hoped Roxas would come back from wherever he was just in case Rikku flipped. Because if that happened, then the red-head guessed that all hell would be let loose. So, why was he even urging her on?

"Axel… Is this love potion?" asked Rikku suddenly. Axel wasn't sure on how to answer this question, so he just nodded slowly. He was really hoping that Roxas would come back quick. Rikku had 'that look' in her eye.

Axel gulped, now wishing that he'd chosen a more appropriate time to get Rikku to try her first beer.

Rikku grinned. Axel gulped. Roxas appeared behind the corner.

"I'm back, what did I miss? … Rikku? What's the matter with Rikku?" asked Roxas, looking at his sister questioningly.

Axel turned to Roxas, his back facing Rikku. Roxas turned to see Axel's great excuse.

"Well… I sort of let her have some beer… and well… then now she thinks it's some sort of 'love potion'… I did bad, didn't I?" asked Axel, shifting nervously in his seat. Roxas nodded slowly.

"No wait… you gave her 'alky-hol'? DEAR FAFENFICTIONERS!" he cried, clutching his head, screaming the 'all-round' name for the bunch of Over-Lords.

Axel grinned sheepishly, "Erm… yes… I gave her… 'alky-hol'…? Why is that bad?" he asked Roxas, backing away, not sure if he was really ready for an answer.

"Well, no one in our _whole_ family is allowed 'alky-hol', not after what happened to Uncle Oogie Boogie…" Roxas sighed, unhappily, shaking his head, deep in memories. Oh those fateful, merciless memories…

"Why? Did he change his name to 'Oogie Boogie'?"

"No, he was always called Oogie Boogie…" Roxas muttered, before lifting his head back up to find that Rikku was gone.

Wait.

Backtrack.

"RIKKU'S GONE!" he cried out, quickly forgetting any manners as he pushed his chair back and left Axel to run after Rikku.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Operation of the Mission of the Vegnagun

"Why did you call it _Operation of the Mission of the Vegnagun_?" asked Mindy in a rather sarcastic tone of voice, flumped down outside the town hall in a lot of green foliage, the map of sewers spread out before her like some holy map that would lead them to some great treasure. Or maybe two thousand - give or take about five - brothers and sisters, with rainbows zooming around them that blinded people with all the pretty colours.

"Well, I always thought a Vegnagun sounded cool – like a vegetable with a gun," said Shuyin, itching the back of his neck. "And I'm not sure what the difference between operation and mission is, so, er, why not call it both?"

"A clever plan indeed… You have used your brains, Shuyin…" said Lenne, nodding her head in approval. "Sooooo, guys, we've got all our stuff?" she asked, holding up a pile of clothes that magically appeared behind her back. Just like some cheap fafenfiction story, or maybe a corny TV show which majorly screwed gravity, physics, the meaning of life and space over in one merry sweep.

"Yep," said Shuyin brightly, fixing a pair of dark glasses to his face, to shield his identity from the real world. Or at least, a hall full of kids that were taller than him.

"Right, you two go in a make a distraction, and then I'll run in there, steal our siblings away and then we go home, we dance, we schmooze, we eat cake, we get a bit bored of that and then slit their throats," Mindy laughed in an evil way, tapping her fingers together in such a combination that the whole world froze over, lost in her evil-ness.

"Uh-huh," Lenne nodded, as she jumped atop of Shuyin's shoulders, as Mindy handed them one of her Lenne's dad's coats. They wrapped around them, stacked one on top of each other. Lenne looked rather amusing, her little kid-like face peering down from about two metres in the air.

"No way they'll fall for this…" mumbled Shuyin, as Lenne kicked him in the head, amongst the folds of coat that shrouded the boy from vision.

"You'd be surprised…" Mindy mumbled back, a small smile on her face.

Operation of the Mission of the RIKU and the Alky-Hol

Meanwhile, past the border of bold text that separated the exterior of the hall from the interior, Riku was hatching his plan carefully and craftily, like a mother hen pouring steroids into tiny cracks of her eggs, to make her chicks grow up into powerful Arnold Schwartza-za-ni-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-urs. Or however the hell you spellArnold Schwartza-za-ni-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-urs's name. I think I speeeelt it write, butt yoo never no.

Riku was moseying around the table that Tidus had previously been dragged down off, his olives in one hand, eating a few of them every two seconds. Even though all the olives were only succeeding in making him feel even more sick. Maybe he shouldn't have eaten all of those olives…

He sighed, as examined the punch, with fruit juice swirling around in garish patterns in the centre. He sniffed. Nobody noticed what he was doing – nobody had been paying attention to him during the … duration … of the whole party, so why bother _paytng_ attention now?

Hell, if he painted himself blue and ran around like a crazy chicken with its head cut off by an irate farmer's wife nobody would notice. Or, if he ran around painted blue with his head actually cut off… He doubted people would even pay attention, then.

He felt slightly envious of Tidus – even though ungodly (or unfafenfictionistic) force had made him make an ass out of himself, as least Yuna had managed to pull him away, at least Yuna had noticed. Even if really dented his pride.

Maybe it was better to be unseen and unheard… Your reputation couldn't take a frantic nose-dive.

No, you'd be _there_ and nobody would pay attention to you and make you hold olives and hats for the rest of your lives whilst the boy _you_ fancied started to kiss some random red-head called Kairi.

Maybe having no reputation was better than being invisible…

Riku growled, his head all mushed-up and smooshy with thoughts of Arnold Schwartza-za-ni-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-urs and olives and techno dancing, as he picked up a bottle off the table and added it rather craftily to the punch before he lost his nerve or his bottle (my puns will get the better of me /wipes away tear/).

Although, he wasn't even doing it that craftily… He was facing everybody to every body and everything, but people were still mistaking him for a hat-stand, a slave called Jeeves, a creature who carried olives and a general Riku-type create. And everybody thought Riku was a brainless dolt who couldn't plot, scheme or plan for himself and had to hire trays of olives to do it.

But Riku _would_ make a stand, as he was doing right now, glaring at Kairi as she giggled and pulled at Sora's arm, requesting for him to change the song to something by one of her Japanese artists, like Ayumi Hamasaki.

Yes.

In case you were wondering, Riku _was_ poisoning the punch, and that tray of olives he had was really an incendiary device designed to blast him and everybody else in the room to kingdom come, thy will be done.

Either that, or he was spiking the punch

Take your pick.

Personally, I'd go for the first one ... He always was a shifty character.

Operation of the Mission of the Love Potion

Rikku was very happy, after Axel had handed her that happy-drink. She was swaying around the room, bumping into people, the only thoughts occupying her whacked-out brain was to share this lovely feeling she had bubbling up inside her.

She still had that happy concoction of rainbows and flowers and pink hearts in her hand, mostly filled, and even though it didn't look very nice – it was dark brown – if you drunk enough it turned pink. Everything turned pink if you drank enough of it, and you could see doubles of everyone floating around and you grew ten extra toes.

The girl giggled, as she crashed into a group of people, a happy smile as wide as the Nile slapped onto her face.

She walked through the crowds, tottering around straight into groups of people with no cares in the world. Flighty and fancy-free, that was she.

After a few minutes (really, it took a surprisingly long time to get the vast barren plains of the OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM) she finally drew up to the table where the punch sat regally, a half-baked plan forming in her head.

She would simply pour her drink and any others she could find like it into the punch bowl and stir it around! And then everybody would drink it and she could be a good little girl and share that happy feeling inside her. For, on kiddie TV and Lazy Town it taught you to be kind and share. And there was nothing better to share than LOVE.

She paused at the punch bowl, her drink in her hands, and frowned a little when she noticed that it was now only half-full. Or half-empty, to be more pessimistic, but she was too happy to think about things being EMPTY. Meh, the drink must have evaporated on her way there, she figured, flown away to join the big circle of luff in the sky.

"I'm cupid! The happy fairy of love and peace and mischief!" she giggled, saying it over and over. She liked how the words sounded, all slurred and weird and messed up. She said them over and over and giggled a bit more at how silly she sounded.

It was anyone's guess as to why Roxas hadn't found her yet, what with the din she was making, but it might have been because two girls had held him up asking him where the 'la gare' was.

"Pardon madame, c'est où, le port?" asked both of the girls in unison, scary smiles on their faces.

"Er... Who are you?"

"Ich heisse Annika," they both answered.

"I thought you were French...? And now you're German...? Where do you come from...?"

"Scotland."

"What the hell? How did you even get in here?"

"We see all. We know all," they giggled insanely, before disappearing in a swirl of smoke. Voices continued to float around in the boy's mind long after their disappearance, warning him not to get on the bad side of the fafenfictioners, and they knew where he lived. Apparently, their almighty God, Tetsuya Nomura, CREATED his house anyway and they could control him through the power of word and make him start tap-dancing whenever they felt like the situation called for some humour. NOBODY was going to ruin their well-planned out plot for this story (?) or something like that and they would incinerate the ruins of his house if he did not comply.

God, he was going crazy...

Rikku, meanwhile, **was** crazy, hyped up on love potion, as she poured more and more of the suspicious smelling bottles into the punch, swirling it around with a whacked-out smile on her face, hissing at anybody that approached her.

And also meanwhile, the two 'Annikas' chuckled.

Operation of the Mission of the Win Back Kairi and Have Some Punch Later

Sora smiled as he idly conversed with Kairi the way they used to when they were little. They way they'd used to talk back before Roxas came to the school and everything got flipped around and shook about until it didn't make sense any more.

He remembered when he and Roxas used to be friends... But they just grew apart.

Well, they didn't really grow apart, Belle and Meg _pushed_ them apart.

Sora's plan had worked perfectly, and it had become perfectly clear to him that Kairi never loved Roxas at all, expect for in the sweet fluffy friendship way, where you'd prod each other aimlessly and lay on the sofa back-to-back listening to an MP3 player. Or, say, go on a casual friendly jog with because the boy you'd rather go on the jog with was too busy plotting and scheming on how to hurt your feelings.

Sora was becoming acutely aware of how mean he was being, to Riku, to Roxas, even to Kairi. She didn't have THAT many friends, and there he was, plotting on how to eliminate another one of them. Was he _that_ selfish? Was he so paranoid that any time Kairi so much as looked at another boy he'd scowl and grimace and get out the axe?

If he loved Kairi so much why did he want to hurt everybody close to her?

Maybe if he hadn't scared off all her other friends she'd be a happier, more popular person. The sort of person Riku thought he should date...

And God, he was taking advantage of Riku horribly. Sure he was a little dense and empty-headed, but he was still his _friend_, wasn't he? Was there a horrible little bug somewhere in his mind that forced him to treat all his friends like crap?

_Great friend YOU are, Sora._

And, if he could remove that chip from his brain that told him to treat everybody like crap, maybe he'd consider halting his plan before it got dangerous. Before it hurt anybody.

If he were a richer human being he'd go over and apologise to Riku and stop the party and then maybe apologise to Roxas too, and then all four of them would go get a coffee in a nice little café somewhere and laugh about their follys.

Maybe.

Maybe in that happy little perfect bubble Kairi seemed to live in, where everybody ate cake to forget their sorrows and held hands and sung camp fire songs and laughed and were happy.

Maybe ... **not**...

He had to finish what he'd started.

"Wait a sec, Kai..." said Sora, with a small smile. "I hafta go and make an announcement..."

He was shaking.

He was having doubts about his amazing plans.

"Why don't you go get some punch?" Kairi asked with a small smile on her face. "It's like, warm. And sometimes people shake when they're really warm..."

Sora laughed, as he made his way over to the punch table.

"Lo-oooo-ve Po-ooo-shun?" asked a rather maniacal girl who was serving the 'lo-oooo-ve po-ooo-shun', a ladle in one hand and a stack of cups in the corner. People were crowding around the table, some cheering and other clapping and laughing. A few kids were lying sprawled on the floor covered in the love potion, and were being stepped on by frantic people clamouring for the punch. Sora tutted at the drunken kids making out at the back and pulling hair (two girls were screaming and hitting each other, claiming Bob loved them, whilst Bob snucken off in the background with a pretty auburn haired girl). Their parents would be ashamed.

He guessed the drink was pretty damn good, what with all the kids attempting to get a cup.

"Yeah, I'll have some lo-oooo-ve po-ooo-shun, thanks," said Sora, being handed a cup. "But, er, miss?"

"YESSSSSS?" asked the girl, leaning down from behind the drink-serving bench, her green eyes swirled in the classic crazy way.

"Where's Riku? He told us he was going over here to sort out the poti- drink..."

"Complications arose."

Meanwhile, our jolly friend Riku was busy banging his head against the wall of the toilet stall, a gag made intricately of spoons and cutlery in his mouth, wrists bound with strings of beige ribbons.

"Oh, thank you miss," smiled Sora, knowing nothing of the catastrophe, as he took a sip of the drink.

He giggled in a rather light-headed, bubble-fish type way.

He was feeling less shaky and more confident already.

Operation of the Mission of the Finding Rikku (Not Nemo)

Roxas traipsed through the crowds, now beginning to get very bored of looking for Rikku. He tried to make it better by thinking of smiley faces that would express his feelings.

And as he thought harder and harder, his brain began to hurt.

He decided to stop that and instead focus _all_ of his attention on the small problem of a missing Rikku.

Wait, scratch that.

A missing, _DRUNK_ Rikku.

Oh the horror.

He must warn_ everybody_!

Ring the alarm bells!

Roxas flopped down on the nearest chair, and sighed. Suddenly, a taller female appeared behind him, and funnily enough, started hitting on him...

Roxas gaped at her with his mouth bobbing open and closed.

"No. Go away! LEAVE ME BEEEEEE!" cried Roxas as he ran away from the crazy woman. He was sure he recognised her as his Math teacher.

He breathed heavily as he fell down on yet another chair. But this did not help his cause as sitting right across from the poor, confused boy was another crazy person. This time a male from what looked like grade 11.

Roxas waved nervously as the kid blew bubbles with his saliva. The kid waved back and hit his fist on the table. He looked like he was trying desperately to make the bubble so big that one day it would CONTROL THE WORLD!

Roxas shifted nervously away from the table, wondering what the hell was happening.

He neared the punch, and surprise, surprise! Rikku seemed to be there. She was pouring out punch for everybody and Roxas didn't trust her.

He crept closer to the table. And closer. And closer...

And closer...

_And closer..._

_And..._

"ROXAS DARLING!" cried Rikku as she poured a whole cupful of her 'lo-oooo-ve po-ooo-shun' down his throat. Roxas's eyes widened before he swallowed the mouthful. He closed his eyes as he did so, there was that much to cope with. On opening his eyes, everything seemed much different – it was all pink, and white, and blue, and green.

But not in a normal way.

In a very weird way.

Of course.

He smiled, he liked this drink. He wanted more, and he'd do anything to get some more.

Operation of the Mission of the Scratching Nose

Axel sat.

Axel sat and picked up his drink.

Axel sat and put down his drink.

Axel sat and scratched his nose.

'_My mission is complete,_' he thought proudly to himself.

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

**A/N: **We were originally gunna have the WHOLE party in this chapter... but I guess you'll have to wait for next chapter for AkuRok- whoops... said too much... I meant... -shufty eyes- AkuRock. Hehe...


	9. C6:5: mission complete

**Author/s:** Mr. Blobby and Barney (IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE, RUN FOR YER LIVER!) – very purply/pinky salute-

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.

**Disclaimer: **Yes, it be me, Mr. Blobby, and my good friend, Barney. We have taken over. But no one reads these anyways, so none of ye will know!! Oh yes, and I don't own Kingdom Hearts because it's fun.

F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_**--**Chapter 6.5**—**_

**_x_-_M_i_ss_i_o_n_ Co_m_pl_e_t_e_ .. To A C_e_rt_a_in Ext_e_n_t-_x_**

●◦●----------------------Oo

"Passado, come in... Passado, do you read me?" whispered Lenne into a walkie-talkie.

People at the party turned to stare at the abnormally large person in a trench coat that towered above everybody else. They walked about in her – or it's – shadow, shooting nervous glances up at the tall creature that's head hadn't quite caught up with the body. The head seemed to belong to a girl called Lenny who was 12, but that was ridiculous... It was also rather ridiculous that this two metre tall person with the head of a pea was whispering 'Passado' into a walkie-talkie, held up to it's face with short stumpy arms but nobody cared.

It was also ridiculous that the voice of a little kid came from the supposed 'legs' of the creature, too, but nobody paid any heed to that small niggling little detail either.

Mostly everybody was drunk and had mistaken the human tower (Lenne on Shuyin's shoulders with a lovely inconspicuous trench coat wrapped around them) for a tree with a kid's head stuck on top, anyway.

And why shouldn't a tree with a kid with a kid's head pasted on top whisper 'passado' into a walkie-talkie anyway?

Some crackly static met Lenne's words. Crackly static that slowly morphed into a: "_What? What have you found?_"

"Targets locked on. What do we do?"

"_Stick to your training, Lady Aeon. Remember the golden rule._"

"If in doubt, fight back with orange juice and ketchup?"

"_Bingo_."

Shuyin smile from underneath the large trench coat that was concealing his identity from view, an evil smirk on his face as he clapped his hands together, singing something about plots and plans and blowing up the houses of parliament.

The boy used his short stubby legs to walk forth towards the one known as 'Tidus' who was leaning against the counter of the punch table with his legs crossed, like he really needed to go pee. 'Lady Aeon', or Lenne, analysed the situation carefully and came to the conclusion Tidus was attempting to look 'cool' as he drunk his punch, trying to shake off memories of the previous events when he claimed he was 'George of the Jungle' and tried to techno dance on a table.

Lenne, Mindy and Shuyin (well, maybe not Shuyin, as he was covered by a coat) saw all and knew all. And it was sort of creepy.

The Taller Lenne leant against the table next to Tidus, listening in to snippets of the conversation he was having with (squee) YUNA (her sister! She was so close she could reach out and touch her – if she weren't several feet in the air and her arms weren't so stubby). How Lenne had waited for this day, to meet to her half-sister...

"Y'know, this punch has been spiked..." mumbled Tidus, pointing at his drink he had previously been sipping. "I bet it was Rikku – you know. She got dragged away by her little brother."

"How un-cool," mumbled Yuna, rolling her eyes as she painted her lips cherry-red, looking at her reflection in a pocket mirror. "Seriously. She's a little kid really – who would ever have trusted her to man the punch table?"

"Nah. Rikku's cool... It's not her fault the real Riku has been _tied up in the bathroom_," Tidus muttered, leaning in close to Yuna's face to whisper the last piece of information. "I saw him tied up in the stall. Looked pretty desperate. I didn't want people to think it was me who bound and gagged him so I ... locked him in there... His dad owns the bloody hall! I'm sure they'll find him eventually..."

"Right..."

"Hey, I'm HUNGRY!" Tidus suddenly moaned. "They got any food here?"

Yuna held out a crumpled packet of chips, but Tidus merely shook h his head.

"I hate it when you eat chips and you get a load of crappy broken-up pieces at the bottom. It makes me so damned mad, _y'know_? I think I'll just go-" Tidus turned around to go get some food and crashed straight into that weird two-metre tall kid with the childish face. "Er... Hi? Would you move please?"

"No," said Lenne, enjoying the feeling of floating around above Tidus, feeling tall.

Shuyin, on the other hand, felt small.

"What? I just want some _food_."

"I know what you did last summer."

"What?!? If this is a joke please stop and nobody need get hurt."

"Tidus. I am taller than you. YOU will be the one who is hurt. I know that you tied up Riku and left him in the toilets. I will tell Sora if you don't come with us and then you will be sorry. There are a lot of people here, huh? Huh? Huh, fish-bob? I'd nudge you but I can't as I am too high up and my arms are too stubby. Shuyin, nudge him."

An arm extruded from the folds of coat at the bottom, waved around madly for a bit, then stabbed Tidus.

Red exploded around Tidus' leg.

"ARGH! I'M BLEEDING! I'M DYING!" roared Tidus, as the coat fell off to reveal two little kids and a net underneath. They jumped out from the folds of the long forgotten coat, arms waving around like ninjas or possibly Tidus trying to techno-dance.

The net was promptly put around Tidus.

Yuna turned around (finally) realising the commotion that was going on whilst she sorted her hair and make-up (Tidus was not as important as her hair or make-up, DAMNIT) and was met by a grubby little boy squirting a carton of OJ into her face.

Blinded by running make-up, OJ and curtains of wet (and fragrant orange-smelling) hair, it was easy to bundle Yuna up in a sack too, and drag her outside.

Strangely enough, nobody noticed, or cared.

"Dinnae them kids lookin' like Shoooyin and Lennnnnne?" asked Rikku in a drunk haze, staggering around. "Dat means Mindeh must be around here summmmwhere."

For once, there was no Roxas stood in the corner snorting at her, shooting her crazy ideas down in flames. Roxas was just as drunk as she was.

"Hehehe... Tallllll people shed their coats tooooo reveal leeettleeee people underneath..." muttered Rikku brightly.

●◦●----------------------Oo

Sora hiccuped as he made his way to the middle of the room. He was feeling very happy. And very strange. And hiccupy.

Sora hiccuped again.

He remembered vaguely he was there because of something … Something important…

However, everything lost its importance after her drunk that happy brown liquid that made everything pink and fuzzy. He couldn't even _remember_ drinking that happy-liquid any more though – his mind was addled. The only place he was fit for being at now was the crazy house.

The boy swaggered up to the stage – nay, he thought he was swaggering, but was really doing a sort of techno remix of skipping (COOL, on-crack version – all the COOL kids did it. And Sora was a cool kid. So SORA did it and absolutely no one else did) as he meandered through the crowds – nay, bashed into several people and made his nose go funny, which made him giggle – as he made his way up to the stage.

He wanted to announce something, he vaguely remembered.

He wasn't sure what he wanted to announce, though.

Even though he had no idea what he was doing his feet drew him to the stage, and he cursed his bewitched shoes that made him dance around in circles. Maybe his shoes just liked the stage because it was so big and tall and seemed to glowing, like life started there. Yes, life started on the stage, and he needed to be on it to obtain some of his 'life dust' which would bestow upon him infinite wisdom.

"Hewo, guys!" Sora cried through the microphone, all ideas of plots and plans driven from his head. All _ideas_ he'd ever had driven out his head – even the important ideas, like why it was useful to eat. "Anyways, we are gunna par-tay like it be 1699! Boo-yah!"

He clapped his hands together, watching all the other very hiccupy people turn to see what the boy was clapping about.

As he kept clapping – making sure all the kids had his attention – he found it rather tuneful.

He giggled, watching his hands go back and forwards, hitting each other. Everyone else looked at their own hands and decided to have a go themselves. Pretty soon the whole hall was full of the ringing noise of clapping. It was so loud that 'Twilight Town' could've heard.

To Axel, it seemed like he was the only sober person there. Apart from Roxas of course, who he knew was totally against alcohol and was obviously a smart and serious guy who didn't take orders from anyone. Or something along those lines but less corny.

From his place at some random table he could see Kairi, who was desperately trying to get Sora to stop clapping. So, maybe Kairi hadn't drunk anything either. Sora was persistent in his clapping, and wouldn't stop for anyone.

For, unbeknownst to Axel, Kairi's dad and her 'uncle' – not really her uncle, but her dad's work-mate who sometimes let Reno borrow his car when the red-head felt like crashing something into a ditch or a tree – drunk constantly. That was probably why Reno kept referring to Kairi as 'his lad', 'his lovely son' and, occasionally, 'his grandfather' and for variety: 'Darth Vader'.

Kairi could tell the difference between drink and love potion, but as Roxas and Rikku had never been allowed within 50 feet of 'the dreaded drink' they could not. For, their uncle Ooogie Boogie drunk so much that he ended up happily gambling away his house and many of his clothes under the influence of alcohol, and ended up in a cardboard box on the street. Unfortunately, he was too fat to fit in the box, and he got stuck and the firemen had to cut the crazy man free and drag him home, only he was so drunk he claimed his 'home' was Walmart, and ended up being taken away for being addled in the head.

Meg and Belle didn't want that to happen to their kids, so they never let them look at alcohol.

Axel snorted as the younger red-head pulled Sora's hands apart, and Sora, being the stubborn bastard he was, clapped the back together. He could see Kairi giggle at his stupidity, almost a little nervously, and then try again. Sora wasn't having any of it, and carried on with his annoying clapping, as did the rest of the hall.

"_Sora!_ They're taking orders from you, drunk or not! Tell them to **stop!!!!**" Kairi wailed in desperation, her voice drifting over towards Axel.

"But I wanna **play!!!!!**" Sora countered, giggling as he took a running leap off the stage like people did in movies, hoping that the people in the bottom would catch him.

Kairi screamed as she tried to grab hold of his hood, but gravity (you win again, gravvvyyyy – GRAVITY, even, although gravy is evil in its own rights) sucked Sora downwards from the raised platform away from her. Physics decided to weigh down on the gormless kid in a cascade of Physics books and the apple that started the ball rolling and weird teachers, and lady luck kicked in. Just as Sora's (rotten) luck would have it, people were too busy following his example and clapping to catch him. They merely sidestepped the falling body and continued their jovialities.

"SORA'S DEAD!" Kairi screamed, as she jumped down from the stage, attempting to act like one of those 'cool' chicks in RPG games with mis-matched eyes, guns and shorts that would look more in-place around the behinds of toddlers. And, with these words and actions, she knelt down in front of Sora, who appeared to be happily dead on the floor.

Until he got up again about two seconds later, as if made of rubber, and started to clap again. Happily, of course.

"C'mon! CLAP TO THE BEAT!"

Axel got up; deciding to help Roxas find Rikku if he hadn't already, and Axel had a sneaking suspicion that it was Rikku's fault everyone was drunk anyway.

As he trundled through the clapping crowd he noticed a certain blond clapping along with everyone.

"Roxas?" he asked, walking along to the boy. The little blond head turned round suddenly, his eyes gleaming, "Not you as well!" he cried. He didn't know Roxas, at all really; he just knew that he was Rikku's 'little buddy' and that he lived with her. For some unknown reason.

"Poke," Rikku muttered, prodding an intrusive finger roughly into Roxas' arm.

"Nu-uhhhhh!" Roxas cried, drawing back from the deranged girl.

"You _liikkkeeeee_ Kairi!"

"No I don't!"

"You _liikkkeeeee_ Kairi!"

"No I don't!"

**Poke.**

For some strange reason, Axel had not reached Roxas yet. For some reason, even though I have stated above he had started to walk towards him a while ago. I wonder what happened to Axel… Boy he sure does walk slow… I mean, oh, no, wait... Oh yeah, I remember now – he fell in a random plot hole… and Yuna popped out.

Skitts!

The plothole's broken again! It sucked Axel under and Yuna came out!

_Right… Okay… let's just fix that… _

Yuna has now turned into Axel

As he neared Roxas (AGAIN – you do realise it must have taken him about five minutes to walk up to Roxas? F'neh, whatever corresponds with our plot… /flips through script/ WE HAVE A PLOT NOW? I thought we couldn't afford one… Skitts: We CAN'T, that's not a plot, that's the word 'POT' on a piece of card… Lamatikah: Oh… that explains it all…) he saw that Rikku was standing behind him, her green eyes flickering up and down, up and down, over to Sora and her hands, to Sora and her hands.

Occasionally she would time out of her busy schedule to prod the poor boy stood next to her and to mutter something in a sing-song voice, before turning back to her clapping.

Roxas on the other hand was watching Axel, carefully. Axel was kind of freaked out by this but just took it as a sign drunkenness.

Roxas raised his head as Axel came face to face with him. But because of the height difference it was more of a chest to face thing if you see my point. And Axel didn't have a face growing out of his chest.

Obviously.

So saying it was face-to-face was rather silly.

As Axel's eyes travelled down towards the little boy, he saw some sort of evil glint in his eye. He supposed he'd have to take this as a sign of drunkenness too.

Roxas swayed slightly, before furrowing his brow and standing on tiptoes.

Roxas giggled softly – Kairi looked really pretty today.

She must have done something with her hair.

And she'd grown about fifty feet, but that WASN'T THE POINT!

"I'm not gay!" he said, before snatching Axel's chin and forcing it down, causing their lips to collide. Axel's eyes widened as his first thoughts were to pull away, but Roxas wasn't going to let him do that. He had switched so that now his hand was at the back of Axel's head with a grip so hard, Axel wouldn't be surprised if his knuckles were bleeding.

"_Click!_" said a small intrusive voice in the corner.

But why was he thinking such things when there was the kid... kissing him... in front of Rikku... Rikku... RIKKU WITH A PHONE! Where the hell had she got that?!

He closed his eyes, wishing her to be away with herself, but he knew that she'd be standing there with a fucking camera phone, and an evil look in her eye, and that's really all she needed to ruin Axel for life.

He felt the grip at the back of his head loosen, and a very faint sounding boy mumble something incoherently before passing out in his arms. Rikku on the other hand, had now taken her picture and was putting her phone away... somewhere, in one of those odd pockets she had all over her outfit and reached over for a some more punch, giggling and muttering something about 'Roxas owing her twenty bucks'.

Axel could hear sirens wailing and see red lights flashing about inside his head as Rikku leant forward to tip the cup into her mouth. But, being in the situation he was – having a half-dead boy cradled in his arms – he wasn't quite ready to jump up in slow motion screaming 'NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!'.

So instead, he just watched on in pure horror as the girl poured the drink into her mouth, and swayed a bit, before collapsing right then and there.

Axel groaned, before laying Roxas on the ground, heaving Rikku onto his back, and then picking Roxas up in his arms again.

He was pretty sure he could remember where they lived...

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

As long as Sora was happy, Kairi was happy.

… Most of the time.

For, as of late, Sora appeared to be finding happiness in the form of attempting to help an elderly old lamppost cross the road outside, whilst winking at the trash can, muttering something about: 'hey baby, look at me, helping an old lady cross the road. That makes me pretty sexy…'.

And Sora acting like a nut-case was not making Kairi happy.

"Sora, you should leave the lamppost and the trash can alone now…"

"BUT I NEED TO HELP HER CROSS THE ROAD!" the boy yelled, with a manical gleam in his eye, hands curled up into paws as he snorted and hopped about. "Madame, do you need a hand? It must be awfully cold outside in this weather, here, borror my SHAWL!" cried Sora handing over his jacket 'shawl' and draping it around the lamppost.

"Sora, I _really_ think you should go back inside before you hurt yourself and everyone els-"

"Aww, you're just jealous of Trashy McGarbagepants here 'cause of her unique smell. She's my new girlfriend, you know? Bit of a stocky build, seems to have a skin problem, ice-cold, and makes a funny hollow sound… But she uses _amazing_ shampoo!"

Kairi clenched her teeth and firsts together simultaneously. "Sora, there is no godly way of telling whether your lovely new girlfriend is even female or not! Sora, it is a trashcan! Sora, trashcans don't have gender! I have a gender!"

"Mouse," muttered Sora, stabbing one finger at Kairi, then turning towards 'Granny McLamppost'. "She won't cross the road, stubborn old bat… Look, it's perfectly safe…" Sora mumbled in a happy voice, blundering out in the middle of the road. "Absolutely nothing to-"

**VWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!**

Sora fell backwards into Kairi's awaiting arms, as the girl cradled his head and shook her fist at the passing taxi (yes, all the same time – despite the fact that would only be possible if she about twenty pairs of arms.)

"Watch where you're going, **_jerk!_**" she screamed, looking down at the poor boy, slumped in her arms. "C'mon Sora, let's get you home… The 'guests' at your party don't need to see you like this…"

"B-But Trashy McGarbagepants… Will I ever see her again?!" he wailed, making toddler-ish pathetic clutching motions with his arms in the general direction of the trash can.

"I'm sure you will…" Kairi soothed.

"Can I at least give her my number?"

"No, Sora."

Sora whined a bit like a kicked puppy, before starting to hum brightly: "_Summer lovin' had me a blast… Summer lovin' happened so fast..._"

Yes, and he even sung all the women's lines.

**VWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!**

A motorbike sped by quickly from the scene of the crime (the party from hell)

Axel panicked as he tried to keep clasp of Roxas, and a half-passed-out-half-alive Rikku held him round the waist limply. As he passed Sora and Kairi, he noticed the brunet was acting flirtatious with a … trash can?

"BUT GRANNY-LAMP POST CAN'T CROSS THE ROAD!" came a cry as the motorbike whooshed past the lamp post and the 'female' (hopefully) trash can, with 'her' admirer, and 'her' admirer's admirer.

Axel tilted as Roxas's corpse like body decided flopped over and tipped the motorbike on an unsuitable angle. It felt like Rikku was about to fall. And she probably would have if it hadn't been for Axel's magical tricks on motorbike.

He flipped Roxas up back to the other side, so his left arm was supporting the younger boy, and his right arm was free to manoeuvre Rikku back up to her sitting position. But this left the small problem of:

_What the hell was driving them?_

"SHIT!" cried out Axel in alarm, swerving out of the way of oncoming vehicles using his feet instead of hands.

A random horn beeped somewhere as Axel (cough) gracefully (uncough) swerved into Rikku's driveway. This was before when Rikku limply raised her hand an inch, indicating that a whole load of construction work was being done on it.

Axel winced, "Geez, Ri'… C'mon…" he secured Roxas back in place and pressed his foot down on the pedal. He soon felt Rikku's breathing turn back into I R passed-out/asleep.

He relaxed a little as the traffic died down partially and Roxas wasn't being so restless. For Rikku on the other hand, not being restless was a bad idea. Every few seconds she would slip and Axel would have to pull her back up, which proved to be very tricky as the girl was sitting behind him, and to be quite honest, he was very pleased when the welcoming sight of what he presumed to be Rikku's house loomed up out of the darkness…

But there seemed to be something funny with what he presumed to be Rikku's house.

Well, to put it bluntly, Axel hadn't exactly expected to be met with a bombsite.

Pieces of furniture were scattered about the lawn and the grass seemed to be dying in certain places, clogged up with wet mud and dry mud in a mad mixture.

Parts of the house appeared to be blown around in the lawn at random, an exploded toilet scattered around the grass, pieces of china everywhere.

Men were scurrying around with wheelbarrows laden with junk and objects, placing bricks into empty slots in the walls and humming rather tunelessly in the way that most workmen did when they were amazingly bored and had been working at one job for all of five hours. They were all being supervised by a weird-looking man with a fast-fading tan, who was doing more time running around the lawn after a renegade tent than actually supervising the men to fix up what Axel presumed to be his home. That was probably why after about every few seconds a shout could be heard from at least one of the men, claming they'd put a hammer through the wall, a chisel through a priceless antique family heirloom or coated one of their workmates in wet cement.

"Er… What happened here?" Axel asked, jumping off his motorbike, leaving Rikku and Roxas slumped on to. "Why has the house been blown to smithereens?"

"I killed the toilet," said the guy chasing the tent proudly, turning around, the tent getting blown into the back of his head with a fierce 'fwumph', before going about on its merry way to torment some more of the workers.

"Oh… So, where are Rikku and Roxas staying?"

"I don't _know_!" said the man brightly. "Maybe you should ask Meg… But, uh, you can't ask Meg because she's gone to stay at Sally's house until I fix the house and the toilet and crap… So, uh, maybe the kids are sleeping in cardboard boxes outside of WalMart? Taking a leaf out of Oogie Boogie's book, maybe…"

Axel didn't bother to question who this 'Oogie Boogie' was or why he had a book filled with leaves. All the red-head knew was that he couldn't let the two passed-out blondes stay at this demolition yard, or go live in boxes outside of WalMart.

"Well, er, I guess I better be off… I, uh, have Roxas and Rikku by the way… Are they your kids?"

"Yep. Well, Roxas is, Rikku isn't exactly. I'm Hercules. Roxas's dad and Rikku's care-taker," said the man, smiling rather stupidly, as a loud crash could be heard in the background.

Axel raised an eyebrow, watching a jet of water streamed from the toilet one of the workers must have newly installed, shooting the poor work guy back about two hundred yards into the road, where a big Vimto truck promptly run over him. The red head could've sworn the guy inside the van was French, with a beret and twirly moustache, laughing manically about 'eet ees suu funnay teh mek ze oinglish spekeng fouk zerstay and zen run oveer zem ven zay let zerrr gee-ard doo-urn'.

"Uh, one of your work guys… Uh… Crushed by truck…" said Axel, not sure how to tell Hercules one of his work colleagues was dead. He was probably one of his best friends, and the man would start crying and clinging to Axel and then his life would be ruined and it would suck.

"Oh no, it doesn't matter! There are plenty more generic work people I can hire from the agency! And if there aren't, then I can just give a chisel and hammer to a guy in the crazy asylum and watch him merrily run around sticking DIY equipment into people."

"A fool-proof plan, I'm sure…" said Axel, shuddering as he got back onto his motorbike.

"Freak…" he muttered, watching as Hercules ran off after his tent, straight out of the picture and into another rather eventful story, featuring him, Axel, going out with a girl called Naminé who set fire to things. And then he'd probably portal himself to some odd place where a girl called Kairi, who liked the English type of chips. Not American chips, but fries.

/holds up sign saying 'REDD "CHIPS" TODAH FOOKS)/

And one about some people who go to school with a girl called Tallie.

You've read this now – thus, you must include this crazy feller in your story/winks/

The minds of the fanfenfictioners was scary, at the very least.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Axel didn't really want to take the passed-out kids to his mad-house, but it seemed there was no other alternative. Apart from leaving them in that box Hercules mentioned, outside of WalMart.

And he wasn't that cruel.

As soon as he stepped through the door, the 'welcome party' appeared – Axel's granddad who was obsessed with nothingness.

"Hey Paps…" Axel greeted the old man, waving his hand a little. The man grimaced.

"Where's your nothingness, boy?"

Axel shrugged, "I've got a few friends over, is that okay?" Xemnas nodded, slowly. Axel grinned and patted him on the back, "That's great Paps! So, how's everyone? They all had their meal yet?"

Xemnas shook his head slowly.

"Oh, good… I look forward to it… Who's cooking tonight?" asked Axel, nervously twitching, knowing he'd have to pass the 'nothingness appreciation test'.

He remembered several painful events when he was little, and he got the answer to the 'nothingness' test wrong, and Xemnas had banished him to Mushu's hutch outside for a day.

"I am cooking."

Axel smiled, "So… I look forward to that too…"

"You better, boy! I'm cooking my speciality tonight… NOTHING!"

"That's sooo good! So, can I come in, _now_?" Xemnas laughed.

"Yes… You can come in if your guests pass the tests!" Axel gulped. His guests weren't exactly in the 'passing tests' moods. But, ah well, they were in desperate need of somewhere to stay, and that much was obvious. Maybe, if Xemnas wouldn't let them in, Axel would be able to get through to Tifa.

Tifa was a strange kind of mom. She seemed like she was the mother of four kids. Not three. But, two of those three kids were adopted.

Axel grabbed Roxas roughly, bridal style, and decided he'd take Rikku later, or get someone to take Rikku for him… he would, if he actually trusted anyone in the house.

"Here Paps, this is Roxas, he's my friend's 'little buddy who also lives with her'."

Xemnas peered down at the sleeping boy, and grunted, "So… _boy_," he spat, "What weapon do you carry?"

Silence came from the younger boy who was still sleeping happily, his mouth slightly open.

"Very good! You've passed!" cried Xemnas, allowing Axel to carry Roxas through to the hallway. Numerous sounds were erupting from all directions.

In the kitchen, the sounds of pans clattering and pots clinking could be heard, and from the room across the hall from the kitchen a few cards being shuffled. Axel climbed the stairs, and bumped into his mother.

"Oh Axel! How are ya, darli- Oh… who's this?" she asked, a little suspiciously as she watched Roxas's chest rise up and down, "You haven't drugged him, have you?" she asked, poking the blond in the chest slightly.

"No of course not, mom! He's passed out! He's Rikku's buddy, and he lives with her. He's cool I guess. But I sorta… gave Rikku some beer… and well… she sorta took it a bit badly… and got everyone in the hall drugged. She's out on the bike now. You wouldn't mind going out to get her, would you? I'd rather not have to pass Paps's test again…" Tifa nodded ruffled Axel's hair, before hoisting the washing basket she had cradled in her arms further up her waist and running down the stairs, when which she threw it down as she got to the bottom and scampered outside.

Axel continued on his way upstairs, worrying slightly when Roxas started to cough, but relaxed as his breathing returned to normal.

As he got to the first floor, he laid Roxas down for a minute to scratch his head. The kid wasn't that heavy surprisingly…

But Axel really needed to scratch his head.

Not that he had nits. He just needed to scratch his head.

He picked Roxas up again before pulling the cord on the ceiling. A rope ladder fell from the little door Axel had just pulled open. He carefully climbed up it, making sure Roxas wasn't dropped.

He finally reached his room.

It was the only place he could get some peace and quiet sometimes. His house was so full – everyone in the neighbourhood knew it was overcrowded, but if this was illegal or not, no one really cared. And if the police came round, Tifa would hide about eight of her other housemates. Just in case.

Axel could remember when Tifa told him to hide in the cereal cupboard. That was they day Axel realised why doing yoga was good for you.

But, all round, Tifa only cared.

And that's all that really counts.

Axel laid Roxas down on his bed. Roxas immediately turned over and buried his face in the pillow, sucking in all the warmth from it he could.

Axel laughed slightly, and sat down beside the blond. He could hear footsteps on the stairs, and Axel hoped to Fafenfictioners that it was Tifa with Rikku.

If not, then he'd be in trouble. But he would have no idea why. Just when any of his 'family' members happened to find Axel, something always seemed to go wrong.

That was why Axel was relieved when he saw the blonde head of Rikku appear through the little door, with Tifa's head close after. She grinned at Axel after laying Rikku down next to Axel's bed.

"So, you know this kid well?" she asked, watching Axel yawn. It was quite late, but for some reason, his family, apart from the younger children, were up 'till unfafenfictionerly times.

"Nah, not really, it's just that Rikku was with him, and they're like close friends… I think… Well, I know that they live in the same house. You never know – maybe they have the same problem as… as… as… us..." Axel muttered as he yawned. Tifa laughed and ruffled Axel's hair.

"You need sleep, baby. C'mon, I'll set up two camp beds, yeah, hun?" Axel nodded, his eyes blinking, all gunged up with sleep dust. Tifa left and came back a few minutes later, but this time with a mattress which she rested down on the floor, "Is the little one sleeping on your bed?" she asked, as she set the bed up.

Axel made a 'hmph…' noise and rested his tired self on the headboard. Tifa chuckled and left him again to fetch another mattress. The one she had already set up had all the bedding laid out neatly onto it. Axel yawned and lifted Rikku onto the mattress.

Soon enough Tifa appeared with another mattress, and some more bedding, after having used the bedding already in Axel's room, which was usually used by Demyx… every weekend… and sometimes even weekdays!

Axel smiled as Tifa finally finished setting the bed up.

"Thanks mom…" he muttered, leaning in to give her a hug.

"G'night, my baby…" she sang softly, stroking his forehead as he fell asleep. She carefully treaded back across to the trap door and made her way down, closing it as she left.

Travelling downstairs, she realised that she'd have to cook when she read it was Xemnas's turn.

Whenever it was Xemnas's turn to cook, he would cook nothing.

**Saïx** would claim that he was cooking hearts (but really he was cooking bacon).

**Ansem** would cook some dark slime; no one really knew what it was but Ansem told them it was 'darkness'.

**Vexen** just plain wouldn't cook.

**Cloud** was always too busy to cook, either that or he was too proud to cook.

**Xehanort** liked to cook things. But only if he could do some testing on some hearts.

**Xigbar** just shot things really, so cooking was off the menu. Because the menu would be covered in bullet holes.

**Lexaeus** would cook the only thing he was able to. Which was cabbage. And when he cooked it, he literally, _cooked_ it. It was delicious. And that, folks, is obviously straight from the land of sarcasm. In case you didn't know.

**Xaldin** chopped things too much to be allowed in the kitchen.

**Axel** was still a kid in the house; he didn't have to cook.

And then there were the kids, but if Axel didn't have to make meals, then they definitely didn't have to.

Tifa laughed as she made her way down the stairs. It seemed that she always made the meals, so what was the point with the rota on the fridge.

She often wondered how it came to be that so many people lived in the house. But, she knew her house wasn't the only overcrowded house in the neighbourhood. Axel was saying that Rikku had a lot of people living in her house. Maybe, they had the same problem…

She walked through into the kitchen where the seven other adults were sitting round the table. She busied herself with some bread and cheese. It was enough they needed.

As she did so, Cloud and Xigbar stared at each other, mumbling insults.

"You stole my wife…"

"You live in my house…"

"It's _my_ house!"

"But it has my name on the bills!"

"But I was living here five years before you!"

"But I have a sword!"

"I have a _gun_!"

"Is that all?"

"I have a BIGGER gun!"

"I have a BIGGER sword!"

"I have TWO guns!"

"I HAVE A MOTORBIKE FULL OF _SWORDS_!!"

Other conversations were travelling round the room too; these included arguments on whether 'nothingness' or 'darkness' was better.

Vexen sat in the corner and calculated how much quicker it was to use his new way of walking, than it was to actually walk.

He called it running.

And he knew it would be the future.

The future of walking, that is.

Lexaeus just sat there. Twiddling his thumbs.

And Saïx contemplated the skies, and the universe and all things cosmic and moon-like. And heart-like too… We can't forget the hearts…

Tifa flashed a grin at the table's passengers (I don't believe 'passengers' is the write word to use here… LAMATIKAH! DID YOU FORGET YOUR CAFFIENE AGAIN?!?! Lamatikah: Dunlike caffiene… kill coffee… and coke… and other caffeine induced… DRINKS!) as she passed round the sandwiches. Then she sat herself happily in between Xigbar and Cloud. She gave Cloud a quick kiss on the lips, before biting into her sandwich.

Xigbar simply growled in the corner, as Cloud shot him a smirk.

"Xigbar, baby! Have you seen your son's friends?" asked Tifa, turning to her ex. Cloud just smiled along, pretending he didn't care that Tifa had just called Xigbar 'baby', or mentioned about the fact that Axel was Xigbar's son, and not Cloud's…

"No, why? Are they interesting?" he asked, nibbling at his sandwich.

Tifa laughed, "Shouldn't you be interested in your son's friends anyway?" she exclaimed. Xigbar merely smiled, and shook his head.

"No!" he laughed.

Tifa scowled, "Well, you should."

Cloud smirked.

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

**A/N: **_Put Hercules in one of your stories. As a crazy guy searching for his tent, who runs across the fifty-nine corners of the square globe through all sorts of scenarios the fanfenfictioners like to put him in! Go on, we dares ya! Advertise your stories on the reviewing page, and if we likes yours t3h best then we'll incorporate a scene you'd like in the story… IN THE STORY! But remember – 'T' rated! REMEMBER THAT!_

_And it can be ANYTHING!_

_That's how nice we are._

_/to some poor kids in background/ OI! CLEAR OFF! YOU WANT FOOD? YOU REALLY SHOULD OF THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE YOU BECAME A PEASANT! (loooool, luff Emperor's New Groove xD) Bloody kids… _


	10. C7: hangovers

**Author/s:** Skitts and Lamatikah –five toed salute-

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.

**Disclaimer:** LOL.

F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_**--**__C__hapter __7__**—**_

_**x**_**-**_**H**__**a**__**ngo**__**v**__**e**__**r**__**s**_**-**_**x**_

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Mothers and fathers were the most oblivious species to walk the planet, but none were as happily oblivious as Lenne's parents.

For, most mothers and fathers – even the _thickest_ of them – would at least question why he little daughter and her two 'hooligan friends' were currently enjoying the company of two fifteen-year-olds tied up on chairs with rope.

Nope, not Lenne's parents – he mother just figured they were 'school friends' who had 'popped in for some late-night tea' and had started playing a game called 'the electric chair'. Well, they were obviously playing 'the electric chair' judging by the way they were bound to chair, wriggling around frantically and attempting to sever the ropes with their teeth.

"Made some new friends, Lenne darling?" asked her mother, watching as Lenne slotted an apple into Yuna's mouth, limiting her ability of speech. No more obscenities could be heard.

"Sure I have…" Lenne smiled her delighted little 'cat-got-cream' smile, to silence any suspicions her parents might have.

"They're like our babysitters…" giggled Mindy, attempting to hide the evil glimmer in her eyes.

"Very good… Fafenfictioners know you need some babysitters, somebody to keep you in line and stop tying random strangers to chairs… Anyway, would your friends like some soup too?"

Lenne took a look at the two extra bowls of soup in her mother's hands, and nodded instantly.

"Yeah, they would."

Her mother put the soup down on the carpet, ruffled the top of Lenne's head and planted a quick kiss on her messed-up hair, before exiting the room with a cry of: "Play nice, children!"

As soon as her mother's back was turned Lenne made a mock vomiting noise, shoving a finger into her mouth as she did so.

"Tetsuya Nomura… She's so _annoying_! I'm not a little kid!" she exclaimed, taking her finger that was wet with saliva from her mouth as she started to use it to fix her hair back.

Yuna made a muffled sort of noise against the apple in her mouth, rocking on her chair with large eyes, thrusting her head in the general direction of the soup.

"What, you think this is for _you?_ You're my half-sister and you've been living in the sewer for so long that rich food will upset your stomach. You'll be sick if you eat fine foods like this," Lenne said simply, flopping down on the carpet, taking the bowl of soup and drinking the scalding hot red liquid straight from the bowl.

Yuna rolled her eyes and flopped back down into her chair.

There were numerous other different ways to spend your Saturday afternoon, and being tied up on a chair, tortured by crazy kids who were obsessed with the idea you and your boyfriend were their siblings only ranked up to about twenty-six on that list. It fell behind shooting tin cans off picket fences and came in front of listening to your mother play the violin.

Anything was better than listening to your mother play the violin…

A loud screeching sound could be heard from downstairs, as Lenne's mother (or father) started doing something that can only be described as strangling a cat.

Or playing a violin…

Very badly…

Yuna growled into her apple-gag, banging her head into the back of her chair, succeeding in knocking herself out.

There was something worse than listening to your mother play the violin…

And that listening to somebody else's mother play the violin…

At least at home you were PAID to appreciate and put up with it.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"Roxas… Roxas…" Roxas's blinked slowly as he tried to focus on the person calling his name. Platinum blonde hair… big baby blue eyes… pale skin… NAMINÉ! He was home! "Roxas? Why are you at Denzel and Marlene's house?" Roxas's spirits fell with a 'KAPLUNK'.

"Five more minutes Nammie…" he muttered, sinking back into the bedding. But then again… why _was_ he at 'Denzel and Marlene's house'? Naminé sighed, and tapped her feet impatiently.

He wished she'd clear off somewhere and stop confusing his poor brain. His brain was already twisted into unrecognisable shapes and throbbing painfully and he didn't appreciate Naminé stood there, telling him ludicrous lies like he was at DENZEL AND MARLENE'S HOUSE. Pfft… How silly was that?

How could he be at Denzel and Marlene's house when _Naminé_ was there?

How could he be at Denzel and Marlene's house when his own house had blown up in a mixture of broken toilet and sewage water?

How could he be at Denzel and Marlene's house when … Naminé … had gone to live with them?

…

Damn…

His head really hurt right about now.

He growled like a trapped animal and slapped a hand to one eye, leaving the other unexposed one rolling around aimlessly in its socket. His mouth was contorted into a look of utter PAIN! as creatures that looked strangely like Oogie Boogie continued to tap-dance around in the blank cavern of his mind.

"Roxaaas! It's _been_ five minutes! Axel and Rikku and Denzel and Marlene are all waiting for me and you!" she cried. Roxas sat up groggily. He couldn't remember _anything_. Sure, he knew his own house was a bomb-site, but who really forgets _that_? And he knew why Naminé was there, but why was _he_ there? And what about Axel? What did a CAR-PART have to do with anything? All of last night was amazingly blurred, as Oogie Boogie started to dance FREESTYLE in his mind, making the pain about a trillion times worse. He beat his head with his hand and cried out again.

"My _heaaad_!" he whispered, in pain.

"Tifa says she's got something for your head downstairs, because she knew that you would have a killer headache." Naminé rocked on her feet as she spoke her words with an air of knowledgeableness.

Roxas winced as he lifted a leg off the bed, and another, until both legs were off the bed. His eyes twitched a bit, but he managed to make his way downstairs.

In the living room, there was a cluster of kids, all crowding round a little TV set. He didn't want to look at that TV set himself… It was so small all the colourful moving pictures were making the Oogie Boogie in his head start to break dance.

He spotted Rikku with an ice pack on her head, in the lap of a lanky red-head. Vague memories of this teen came flooding back to him. He was some sort of car part… Exhaust…? Gear box….? Engine…? Eh, screw it. Who really cared?

"Ah, Roxas, our Sleeping Beauty!" came a voice from outside the room. All of a sudden, in came what Roxas presumed to be the mother of the house.

But the first thing he noticed was her chest…

As this was what first most people noticed when they first met her.

Roxas suddenly realised he was staring, and he quickly turned away.

"C'mon, babe, you look like you need something for that head of yours!" the woman joked, indicating for Roxas to follow her to the kitchen.

In the kitchen was a man, with bright blond hair, similar to Roxas's. And a big, big sword.

"Cloud, if you wanted to make yourself a sandwich do you have to cut it with that _monstrosity_ of yours? We have a perfectly good knife in the drawer…"

"No we don't," said 'Cloud' darkly, slicing up bread smeared with peanut butter and jelly with his giant sword. "Vexen stole them all, melted them down, and is using them to help him further his experiments about 'running'."

"Oh… Well, that sounds like Vexen alright… Why does he even _live_ here anyway?" she started to mutter to herself, as she led him (him being Roxas, not Cloud) over to a freezer, form which she took an ice pack, and handed it to him. Roxas pressed it against his forehead, and flinched at the extreme temperature. Tifa opened a couple of drawers and laid on the table, a glass of water and some hangover-pills.

Tifa pushed them in front of Roxas, "Axel tells me that this is the first time you ever had any alcohol at all. Do you know how to do this?" she asked, sitting opposite the kitchen table to Roxas.

Roxas looked at the water and the tablets, "Yeah, I think so… I had a headache once in grade seven and the nurse gave me some…"

He picked up the aspirins and popped them in his mouth before flushing them down with the glass of water.

He gagged as soon as the water and pills cascaded down into his stomach, screaming bloody murder as an uncontrollable urge to flop down onto the floor and wriggle helplessly over took his body.

The Oogie Boogie in his head had gone past the boundaries of dancing… It was SINGING now, whilst battering around like a pinball on roller-skates.

Singing something like 'I WILL SURVIVE!'

"Now, your headache won't go immediately, but it will soothe it, is that okay, honey?" Roxas nodded, clutching the ice pack harder, feeling less and like 'he would survive'. "You can go in the living room with the other kids now, darl'n."

Roxas stood up and sheepishly shifted his butt off the chair in order to start his long trek across the hall to the living room. It would've been quicker to get across the room if he didn't have to side-step plates of pizza, a weird little cricket, some colouring books, a pair of ice-skates and a gun.

Once he got in the room, Rikku motioned Roxas to come and sit beside her.

Once he had sat himself down, his 'sister' grabbed him by the waist and forced him on her lap. So, she was on Axel's lap, and he was on her lap. She probably wanted to get Naminé in on the 'let's see how many people I can get on one person's lap until it turns into a dog pile' game.

"Rikku!" he cried out, protesting to the utmost. But he knew it was no use, she'd always defeat him, and he'd never defeat her.

It was a lost battle before it began.

She giggled as she bounced him up and down on her lap, still clutching an ice pack to her head, and him the same. Axel laughed as Rikku did this, and Roxas noticed that Rikku seemed to be wearing different clothes.

The clothes she was wearing were mainly black, with the odd singe here or there. And Roxas knew that Rikku never wore black, or burnt her own clothes…

"Roxiee. Roxie-pie, is your head getting better?" asked Rikku, leaning her head on his shoulder. Roxas nodded, resting his head back. He was still pretty tired. Which reminded him:

"Rikku? What time is it?" Rikku looked to Axel who raised his arm.

"Quarter past six."

Roxas gulped, "What?"

"Quarter past six in the morning, didn't you hear?" asked Rikku, not realising that Roxas's previous question had been rhetorical.

He hoped Kairi hadn't wondered about why he hadn't been at her house.

He'd go later, because he'd have to of course, and when he did, he'd apologise.

At least, these were the general ideas running through his head, all mixed up along with flashing images of Oogie Boogie doing the cha-cha. Well, at least he was back to simply dancing, and had not broken out into song…

"Axel! You've gotta go feed **MU-SHU**!" cried a voice that sounded an awful lot like Tifa's from the kitchen. "I'd do it myself but Cloud appears to sliced one of his fingers off!"

An awful scream sounded through the timbers of the house a few seconds after her statement.

"Sorry, Cloud! WAIT, WHY ARE WE STILL SHOUTING SO THE WHOLE HOUSE CAN HEAR US?! WE'LL HURT THE KIDS' HEADS!"

"I'M SHOUTING BECAUSE I'M IN **PAIN!!!!!!!!!**" roared Cloud.

"SHUT UP! YOU'LL HURT RIKKU AND ROXAS'S HEADS!" Axel roared, as Rikku and Roxas promptly started a shouting match and clutched their heads.

Roxas just simply fell off his sister's lap and started to crawl around on the floor, his mind blurred with images of Oogie Boogie doing some more death-defying tricks on a skate-board, whilst singing 'My Heart Will Go' and doing the conga.

Rikku, however, appeared to go into the more 'I-r-on-crack-and-drunk-on-hangover-pills' way of coping with her head-ache, that is, she started to dance around and flap her arms about a bit, singing a song about being in pain. The lyrics of the song were just the word 'pain' repeated over and over to a cool tune.

"PAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAIN!" Rikku sung, hopping around in a rather frenzied way.

"I guess I'll go feed Mushu… You two… Just, er, hang on…" Axel muttered, getting up and closing the living room door behind him, hoping to silence the sounds of Cloud yelling like a harpy… Hah, and he called himself the 'alpha male'. Really…

Well, his finger _had_ been chopped off, but Axel had expected him to at least take it a little bit more manly-like, more like Ken or Action Man…. Then again, Ken was a pouf and Action Man was made of plastic, so he guessed no amount of finger chopping off would have hurt them that much…

The boy made his way into the kitchen, noticing that the counter where you chopped stuff up like sandwiches and onions was sliced cleanly in two, and Tifa was attempting to bandage Cloud's hand, attempting to calm him down.

"It's just a finger Cloud, it'll grow back…" she soothed.

"R-Really?" asked Cloud, sniffling.

"No, of course it won't, you stupid boy… We'll just preserve it in a jar of pickles and hope somebody can sew it back on…"

"Would now be a good time to show you my invention?" asked Vexen, popping up from 'somewhere' – Xemnas would be displeased, as somewhere was not nowhere and in somewhere some things happen but in nothing-where nothing happens, go figure – with some metal roller-skates in his hands. "I call these roller-bubbards and they'll REVOLUTIONISE the face of WALKING for YEARS to come! Maybe even WEEKS!"

"… You melted down all our knives to create some _roller skates_?" Cloud growled, narrowing his eyes as he raised out his hand. "Tifa woman, get me my sword…"

Axel rolled his eyes, as he walked away from the scene of the crime, fighting music starting to play, swirling around the house, as numerous close-ups of Cloud and Vexen's eyes swallowed up the screen.

"Turn the fucking playstation off, Denzel…"

"Sorry, Axel…" muttered Denzel as he switched the game off, the fighting music coming to an abrupt halt.

"Hello, Mushu…" Axel said brightly, as he knelt down in front of his little lizard's cage.

He and his family didn't _buy_ Mushu and his weird cricket companion Cri-kee (it was rumoured Mushu was a rare lizard who needed a cricket to groom him. Or maybe they were just inseparable 'pals') but they just … turned up… At their door-step one day… And Axel took them in because Mushu was cool and liked to horde matches and could make porridge with happy smiley bacon faces in them and looked rather fetching in pink aprons.

Yes, Mushu could cook better than Cloud… Now, that was something to be ashamed of… Although Axel wasn't sure who the pink apron suited the most.

As Axel busied himself with cleaning out his pyromaniac pet, the door-bell rang.

As Tifa was busy attempting to stop Vexen unleashing his newest experiment on Cloud (it was a Furby, but still, those things can be lethal, especially as Vexen had invented an assassin Furby, a.k.a, a Furby with a knife taped to it's chest) and the kids were still banging their heads on the floor to get rid of hangovers and watching TVs. Most of the other male members of the household were still asleep or shooting things, so that left only Xemnas to plod downstairs and answer the door, even though Tifa had forbade it several times.

Xemnas would constantly greet door to door salesmen and ask them what they were selling, and if they passed the nothingness exam he would let them in the house and never let them leave (that was why Vexen was there) and if they failed the nothingness test very often he would send Vexen's assassin Furby after them.

Many had died needlessly.

"Hello, _little girl_," Xemnas said, leering down at the indeed rather 'little girl' – even though she was a teenager – standing outside. "What are you here for?"

"Well, first my lizard and my cricket went missing, and now my horse has, and I was wondering if you've seen him…" the girl muttered, holding up a 'lost' poster, featuring a lizard that looked a lot like Mushu, a cricket that looked a lot like Cri-kee, and a horse that looked an awful lot like the one that Tifa had sent to go live in the garage last night when it came around looking for a place to stay.

Xemnas frowned – this girl, she spoke nonsense!

"That's wonderful, now you have NOTHING, goodbye!" Xemnas cried, slamming the door in her face.

Meanwhile, outside, Mulan scowled.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Kairi had a slight skip in her step as she sidled down to the Pharmacy's. She wasn't going to let Sora be grumpy today, nu uh. She was going to make him happy.

Although it was strange, when Sora was drunk yesterday and now, today, whilst he was hung-over, he was the happiest she had ever seen him since… Since a long time, actually. Since when they were little and in preschool and he'd be the sweet little kid who played dollies with the girls and pinched Riku's cookies and gave them to other kids who'd dropped theirs. Kairi wanted that old Sora back – the sweet goofy one, not the one who worked on evil plans and schemes and hated everybody.

He was fine until Belle started poisoning his mind, instructing him to hate everybody who wasn't 100 percent perfect. And nobody was 100 percent perfect – least of all this 'new' Sora.

Maybe you were only truly perfect if you loved everybody…

God, what _was_ she, a hippie?

It would only be a matter of time until she started to smoke weed, mix moonshine (whatever that was), grow her hair so it was down to her knees and start chanting about love, peace and saving the whales. Apart from the small little details, like she'd never smoke weed, even if it 'made the environment better', she didn't even know what moonshine was but it was probably the equivalent of glue-sniffing, she could never ever grow her hair that length without going crazy until she looked like: '.X' and of course she wanted to save the whales, but was too spineless to do anything about it.

And that just put the kibosh on all her little dreams of being a hippie.

Apart from the fact she'd never dreamed about being a hippie in the first place…

Kairi shrugged, as she walked into the pharmacy.

Reno had sent her there on a mission to get some pills for Sora, because the hangover had made the boy go crazy. Aparently he'd raided their fridge, eaten all the ice-cream (EVEN ALL THE CHOCOLATE, a mad, chocolate ice-cream deprived Reno had been shouting) and was now aimlessly running around the house circles, screaming and walking into random pieces of furniture and breaking things.

That sounded like her old Sora, alright.

"Um, hello…" said Kairi to the burly guy with tattoos in the pharmacy, who was playing around with all the drugs that made you grow tentacles and stuff. Kairi didn't exactly trust him – she didn't want to feed Sora any concoction that turned him into an octopus – but she guessed the guy behind the counter was the one with the medical degree and she was not, and so she should just shut up and smile.

"Yeah, what'dyou want? You seem a little young to be coming here, girl… Do you want acid? Who'd you want to kill? I could over with a chainsaw if you give me their address… Because pain is good! Or maybe a poisonous venom from this snake… this snake right here!" the Pharmacist held up a snake, which hissed and snapped at Kairi, Kairi flinched, but the Pharmacist paid no heed and held up a goat as well, "You know they say goat's milk is the spawn of the devil, I could kill 'em with this!"

Kairi blinked, but to come to her rescue another doctor appeared, with a wooden spoon, to which he beat the Pharmacist behind the counter with.

"Now, Dr. Sid, you're a _trainee_, you know you don't have the power to kill anyone… yet."

Kairi blinked again.

"Erm…"

"So, little girl, WHO DO YOU WANT TO KILL?"

Kairi ran.

Kairi ran for her life.

"There goes yet another customer…" the doctor muttered before turning towards towards the next victim, "So, _old lady_, WHO DO YOU WANT TO KILL?" The old lady quickly scarpered off, "Why do they all do that…?" the doctor pondered.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Kairi looked outside the shop, sure enough, it read 'Pharmacist' on the sign. And on the shop next to that read 'Assassin Agency'. She thought for a moment, before stepping into the grim looking store.

"Erm… excuse me… could I have some help, please?"

A pink-haired woman appeared from behind the counter. She had a black tee on, and some beige pants. Kairi noticed that she looked very… odd to say the least.

But besides that, she seemed nice enough.

"Hi, what do you need help with?" she asked, looking Kairi in the eye, making Kairi suddenly very aware of what she looked like. The younger hadn't done much to herself since last night because of Sora being there, and Sora being very drunk, and kept trying to kiss lampposts and trash cans and such. Kairi felt a bit left out – but she reminded herself that Sora still preferred her over 'Mrs. Skinny Lamppost'. But, this had meant that Kairi hadn't had much time to sort herself out, her hair was a complete mess, her make-up was running, her dress had been twisted round a little so she felt a little awkward, but other that that, she guess she looked fine.

"Hi, sorry about my appearance but it's a long story, but I need some pills that can make someone sober aga-" Kairi stopped for a minute – if Sora was sober, he was like a bastardy jerk. Maybe, if she kept him happy for a little longer… "On second thoughts, can I have some pills to make someone happy… and hyper… please?" asked Kairi, looked up at this odd lady.

She smiled, and called into the backroom for assistance. A shorter blonde came traipsing through, her hair seemed to be slicked back, but two antenna-like locks stuck up to make her look bug-like.

"Graceful Assassin needs help guys!" the other woman called into the backroom. A mumbling from the room behind could be heard, "Whaddya mean? Yes, this is Savage Nymph! Geez! I don't get why we need all these weird nicknames – it's not like we're _real_ assassins! The kooks next door took all our trade!!" Some more mumbling, "Yeah, I stole all the pills and stuff from them… Oh shut up!"

"Hey Larx, the girl needs help!"

"Oh right… sorry…" said 'Larx' sarcastically, "So, what's up?"

The pink-haired woman explained Kairi's needs then the blonde sighed and went into the backroom.

"So… what do you need these pills for?" asked the woman, trying to create a conversation. Kairi rubbed the back of her head.

"Well, my friend sort of got drunk last night, but he's nicer with a hangover."

"I see... I used to know a boy like that. It was this one time when we all had some beer, and the consequences were horrible. My cousin, he was, his parents never approved of me though... hm. Well, good luck. See you soon, eh?" she smiled as she passed the pills to Kairi. Kairi smiled back.

"See you!" she grinned, as she skipped out of the store.

Kairi made her happy way back home, still looking like the creature from under the bed, when in fact she was actually the creature just _from_ the bed.

If she were the creature under the bed she'd have teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing _red_ obviously, just like that Nightmare Before Christmas song, and Nightmare Before Christmas songs rule over everything in this tiny world.

They do reign supreme.

The red-head giggled happily, as if she could sniff those happy pills straight through the brown paper bag they had been wrapped up in and the effects were going straight through into her brain, making her feet skip and turn and pivot and dance and her heart _sing_. Of course, her dad had told her the equivalent to having your heart sing was a heart attack, and the song your heart would be singing would eventually turn into a funeral march, no matter how happy it started off to begin with, no matter how much it sounded like the song 'Dr. Jones'. And of course if you were skipping it meant you had gangrene.

Or ants in your pants.

Kairi continued her happy-skippy-hoppity-hop dance routine right up to her front door, as she walked in and kicked her shoes off and hung her jacket up.

"How's Sora?" Kairi asked Reno as she passed the living room on her long, intrepid trek up the barren wasteland of the 'stairs'.

"He's up in your room wearing one of your skirts and one of your bras, singing something about the 'coco-ca-banana'," said Reno very helpfully, drinking some suspicious-looking liquid from a glass bottle. Some liquid that would undoubtedly take root and make him join in with Sora's hang-over jovialities as well.

"Okay then. I got the hangover pills, dad," she said as an afterthought charging upstairs.

"You're a good son, Kairi…"

Reno's praising tones trailed after her as she opened her bedroom door to the scene of utter chaos that awaited her.

Sora was dancing around in half her clothes, singing about Lola being a showgirl and Riku being a blindfold, throwing her old Pokemon toys around the room that she was _sure_ she'd thrown out years ago. She laughed, dismissing the silly thought of Sora rifling through a land-fill site for her old toys… Despite the fact all the evidence seemed to point towards that, as he was covered in dirt, as were her toys…

"Hey Sora, I got you some pills…"

The brunet crept towards her, doing a neat little roll across the floor and rising nimbly up from it, fingers shaped into a James Bond-esque gun, as he pointed his fingers towards the door, in case assassins from the pharmacy had been following Kairi towards her house.

"It's safe, pretty civilian, you may come over here in fear of not being shot…"

Kairi smiled as she walked towards him, holding out the paper bag.

"Reno says you have to take these."

"I WILL NOT TAKE YOUR PILLS!" cried Sora, sniffing them cautiously before throwing the brown packet to the floor in distain, nose in the air like a pampered, pompous poodle. "They … are … healthy… I know you women's tricks… To think, MY OWN MOTHER HIDES LETTUCE UNDER MY MASHED POTATO! My own mother forces vegit-it-it-it-it-t-bulls into my diet! I will not eat your broccoli or cauliflower! I turn my nose up at it!"

"Sora, it's not healthy…"

"All pills are healthy."

"Drugs aren't healthy."

"… Aye, you've stumped me there. So, are these pills DRUGS you have, Kairi?" Sora asked, shuftying his eyes. "The only unhealthy pills are drugs, or so you claim. SO YOU HAVE DRUGS!"

A few doubts began to rush in Kairi's head, like whether they actually _were_ drugs, and if she would really hurt him feeding them to him.

Wasn't she being selfish, forcing him to act like a little kid with mental difficulties who'd been at the Kit Kats? Wasn't this just as bad as his mother who snuck vegetables in his gravy and under his mashed potato, wrapping him bubble wrap and never letting him grow old?

But one look from those giant eyes told her she was doing the right thing.

The serious Sora wasn't the _real_ Sora, he was an act he put on to make himself popular, to make himself accepted, and Kairi never bothered to make herself a double personality she could revert to when she wanted to win friends.

That was why Kairi was more childish than Sora, more able to have fun.

She wasn't self-conscious and she didn't _care_ what people thought.

The old Sora was like that, and she wanted to bring the _old_ Sora back. The real Sora, the doormat Sora, was sleeping behind his smooth and winning façade.

And she would do anything to re-awaken him.

Sure, the woman who gave her the pills looked a bit odd, and she had PINK hair, but then again, if you compared her to the guys at the pharmacy she was as sane as … as a VERY sane thing.

"Sora, you can take your pills with some chocolate ice-cream if you want…"

There was a long pause, as Sora's eyes lit up.

"R-Really?"

"Yeps."

"And can I have all the rest of the ice-cream that's left over?"

"Sure, Sora."

"YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"

And with that statement, Kairi knew she'd beaten the horrible 'new' Sora.

At least for about five hours, at least.

She had earned five hours with the old Sora, her BEST FRIEND.

And she wasn't going to waste them.

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

**A/N: **_I could sing it…._


	11. C8: hev

**Author/s:** Skitts and Lamatikah –five toed salute-

**Summary:** They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… [AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.

**Disclaimer:** LOL.

F_u_ll C_i_**r**cl_e_

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

_**--**__C__hapter __8__**—**_

_**x**_**-**_**H**__**e**__**v**_**-**_**x**_

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Axel sat on the edge of his bed, Rikku sitting lopsidedly in his lap. He ruffled her hair, as she drifted off to sleep yet again. Roxas just peered on with mild amusement, and as he looked on, a little jealousy.

_Why couldn't he be the one sitting in Axel's lap?_

Wait...

He didn't mean it...

He just carried on looking at his adopted sister with mild amusement painted on his little face.

"So, Roxas, how come you live with Rikku?" Axel asked, leaving Rikku this time as she slept. Roxas gulped. How was he supposed to answer this one? He could... TELL THE TRUTH!

"Well, actually, she's my adopted sister..." Roxas mumbled, realising what he was doing half way through and covering his words with his hand a little.

There was a slight pause in their conversation as Rikku started mumbling in her sleep, "Roxas... want the last cookie... give back to me..."

Then Axel snorted.

And Roxas flinched.

And Rikku groaned in her sleep, muttering something about 'damned cookie jars'.

"She's... adopted?" he asked, watching Roxas carefully, then turning to Rikku who seemed to be screaming/whispering something to Naminé about standing on beckoning greenhouses.

Roxas nodded, slowly, wishing he hadn't told Axel now. Rikku would become _unpopular_ and he didn't want that. He wanted Rikku to be _popular_ because she was... _popular_, and _popular_ people deserve to be _popular_.

Axel looked back down at Rikku, and pouted.

"But she's too sweet..." he muttered, wrapping a piece of her hair round his finger and spinning it a little. Roxas sighed, and turned away.

"I'm sorry..." he said, his breathing jarring a bit. He didn't want to have just ruined Rikku's life. Or Axel's, since he seemed to deep in twisting her hair round and round.

"Why are you sorry?" asked Axel absentmindedly.

Roxas turned back round, "Because I'm a loser, and if Rikku's my adopted sister, then she's going to be known as a loser too..." Axel slid Rikku off his lap and clambered down to face Roxas. Roxas could feel his warm breath heat his face, and Axel's piercing green eyes softened at the sight of him.

"Who said you were a loser, Roxas?" asked Axel, a look of wonder upon his face.

"How many friends have you seen around me...? I've only got Kairi... and that's about it... and even though she's great, I know she's a loser too..." muttered Roxas, looking away, not wanting the green eyes to singe a hole through his skin.

"What do you mean? Isn't Rikku your friend? And... Sor- Okay... maybe not Sora... But what about... About... About me?" asked Axel, pointing at himself. Roxas could have died.

"...Y-You?" he stammered, his eyelashes flashing as he turned back towards Axel. Axel grinned.

"Yeah, me. Can't I be your friend? I'm only a _year_ older! I remember Yuffie had friends who were about ten year older, and she's still friends to this day! Well... at least I think she is..."

Roxas gulped, Axel... his friend? Wasn't Axel meant to be like 'King of the School'?

"B-But... You're really popular... and I'm really... really... loserlar..." Roxas informed the boy opposite. Axel sighed.

"But you're cute! And everyone loves cute, right?" Axel smirked, making Roxas blush. Axel smirked, "See, how can you be a 'loser'?" Roxas fumbled with his fingers and looked down, staring at the bedding beneath him.

"I-It's... Crap! Kairi!! SorrygottarushleftKairiandIdon'tknowifshe'sokaycuzIdidn'ttellherIwasn'tgoingtobeatherhouse!!" Roxas rushed up, but Axel pulled him back down.

"Isn't she with Sora?" he asked, staring at Roxas, still gripping his shirt. Roxas gulped.

"Sora..." Roxas breathed, clenching his fists. "That..."

Axel smirked, tutting, "Don't swear, Roxas; it's not a very nice thing to do, is it now?" Roxas grumbled under his breath, "Now, Roxas, I need to ask you something, do you remember _anything_ that happened last night?"

Roxas looked up, his mouth hanging slightly open, his eyes glazed over for a second, "No..." he said, almost as a whisper. "Why?" he replied, normally.

Axel shrugged, "No matter. Okay, I think I'll wake Rikku up, now..."

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

Kairi had been really, really pissed off when she first learnt that it was illegal to have pet trolleys.

The red-headed girl used to have a trolley when she was little, a sweet thing with chipped metal bars, a toddler seat at the front and a logo on the handle claiming it was rightfully owned by the local supermarket.

She had found the trolley by the bus stop, in the alleyway that ran along behind it. It had been abandoned by its careless owner, and Kairi had tutted a little bit, rolled up the sleeves of her sleeveless outfit and trundled off with her new prize.

Reno had been a bit shocked when Kairi had arrived back on his doorstep with a trolley in tow – he'd only asked the damned girl to get him some milk and some cheerios, and she'd come back with a bloody trolley. And she'd bought him the wrong brand of milk and the cheerios were only 20 cents because their expiration date was March last year.

But, after getting over his initial bout of wide eyes and gaping fish mouth, he had christened the trolley (known as Georgina) and dubbed it his official second child. He had welcomed the object into the family with a warm heart, and had lovingly let Kairi keep in the garage in the garden.

And slowly but surely Sora and Kairi obtained a mutual interest, created a 'tradition' of sorts. And that tradition was that every Sunday they'd meet up on the big tall hill over yonder, Sora, Kairi with Georgina in tow, and they'd take it in turns to stand on the renegade trolley and push each other down the hill.

They'd known each other since Kindergarten, but it was really all thanks to Georgina that they had firmly cemented their friendship. After all, any psychologist knows that any child who's about six or seven years old can never resist the urge of scooting down hills on trolleys.

Kairi had a pet trolley, and Kairi instantly became 'cool' and she and Sora would spend many happy hours shoving each other down the hill on Georgina.

And then Kairi's house (or rather, her garage, as the burglars never got into the house) was burgled and, strangely enough, the only thing they took was Georgina.

Kairi wept and sobbed and beat her fists into her pillow.

She and Sora stood outside the local supermarket willing the security cameras to implode with psychic powers, so they could take a trolley and scamper away.

It didn't matter how many trolleys they took and how many trolleys they tried out – none of them worked as well as Georgina. They were too rickety, too rusty, too rebel. The wheels snapped off or got caught and once poor Sora went flying from his not-so-trusty steed, crashed into a bush and twisted his leg.

Once Georgina was gone, the magic seeped away, and Sora and Kairi grew up and learnt it was, in several countries including 'Engerland', considered a crime to steal trolleys and push them down hills. Kairi wouldn't have minded her and Sora doing some more bonding over trolleys, but Sora adamantly refused, saying it was babyish and he'd become unpopular and only stupid little kids played with trolleys. And anyway, he didn't see what was so fun about it anymore.

Kairi had sighed, because she remembered all the fun they'd used to have, and she hated the person who took Georgina, really hated them, because they'd taken all that six-year-old magic away. Sora grew older and sourer as each year passed, and Riku pushed him away from Kairi and attempted to build a wall around them. Sora wasn't her sweet little Sora anymore, whose face split apart with a wide smile every Sunday at the prospect of riding Georgina down a hill again. Sora had turned into a stranger. Lost in a sea of popularity. Sucked under into a wave of bright smiling faces. Of pretty girls with blonde hair and blue eyes, going out of their way every single day to straighten their hair and do their nails, or 'talons' as Kairi called them, and fix their outfits so looked as slutty as possible. Of football-playing boys who messed around in class and disrupted the lessons with really bad jokes that Kairi didn't find funny but everyone else did. Sora was going to become one of those people, one of the people who looked down on Kairi from afar and laughed, and pointed. Maybe if Kairi dyed her hair blonde she'd be accepted. Kairi'd never wanted to be accepted by anyone but Sora.

And Sora would only accept her as a 'person' if she drugged him with insanity pills and ice-cream. All the other times she was simply an object he could make out with until he got himself a better girlfriend.

Maybe Sora shouldn't change – he was Belle's son, so he was obviously perfect the way he was.

Maybe Kairi…? Maybe Kairi was the one who should change?

"Kairi? What are we gonna do then?" asked Sora, bouncing about her like a deranged little terrier. She had a sudden urge to throw a stick after him, just to see if he would fetch it. "What are we going to do to-day?"

Maybe Kairi **would** change, if it meant she could cling on to Sora.

She'd change, straight after one more childish game…

"Sora, do you remember Georgina?" she asked, with an odd little twinkle in her eye, and a rather demonic little twinkle at that.

"Uh-huh uh-huh!" nodded Sora, his head snapping up and down like a yo-yo, making Kairi feel a little bit sick as she watched it move up and down… And up and down… And up…

"Well, I'd like to introduce you to somebody…" said Kairi, walking beckoning Sora out of the back door, towards the blue-painted garage with about 451 specially fitted locks and bolts and chains wrapped around it. Pah, if people said Reno wasn't safety conscious (and ever so slightly over-the-top) Kairi could simply spit in their faces. Ever since the burgalars had broken into the garage, Reno had taken very drastic measures in ensuring nobody would ever break in again. This was a pretty good idea, although Reno had a nasty habit of loosing the 451 specially fitted keys that could open the 451 specially fitted locks. Usually they ended up in Kairi's sock drawer, or in the oven (they'd been in there last time).

Kairi held out her hand, and Sora passed her his lucky charm. His lucky charm was a key ring, and it was shaped like a key, a sweet little item.

But that key ring had more power than one could ever imagine – Kairi wasn't sure how, but it could open up _any_ lock.

About two seconds later Sora's key ring had thoroughly raped all the locks on the garage door, making them all click open simultaneously. Kairi smiled and opened the door deftly, with a swift bang.

"Oh my GOD!" screamed Sora, his eyes wide and shiny with excitement, as he stared in wonder at the sight that befell him.

"She's called Heather. Or Hev, for short..."

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

"_That's right, darling, I'll pick you up in about half an hour. As long as the directions you gave me are correct!_" A tinkly little laugh came from the other line. Rikku smiled.

"So, how's dad?" she asked, listening intently of news from her 'mother'. There was silence for a couple of moments, then a gulpy voice came back to the phone service.

"_Well... he hasn't been seen after he was chasing that tent... Though, I'm sure he'll be fine. He always is. Silly old Herc..._"

Rikku laughed, "I bet he is. Well, be seeing you in a bit, mom!"

She slowly pressed the button marked with a red phone, and laid quietly on Axel's bed. Axel slowly crept towards her, and carefully placed his fingers, gently on her tummy. She squirmed in reply.

He slowly started to tickle them across, causing her to shriek with laughter.

He laughed, and slithered back down to the base of the bed, where Roxas was busy studying the legs.

Axel poked Roxas.

Roxas stared at Axel in bewilderment.

This was before he poked Axel back, of course.

Axel chuckled, and poked Roxas.

Roxas did the same, minus the chuckling.

Rikku laughed, and flipped her phone out again, she then snapped a picture of Axel and Roxas having a poking match. Her lips curved into a laughing sort of smile. The sort you give when you've lost all energy to laugh, so you smile instead.

Except, Rikku hadn't lost all her energy; she was saving it for when they got to the new house.

She just couldn't wait!

Axel and Roxas eventually stopped after about five minutes of backbreaking (or _finger_breaking) poking. Rikku grinned, "Guys, we have 25 minutes of nothing to do. So... what's your favourite type of 'nothing'?"

Roxas shrugged. Axel pondered, his hand held to his chin in an 'I-be-thinking' kind of way. Rikku sighed and flopped back onto the bed.

This was exactly when Lexaeus burst through the door, screaming, "IT'SLILOANDSTITCHIKNEWIT!!"

And then another voice cried out from down the stairs, "IT'S NOT _FUCKING_ LILO AND _FUCKING_ STITCH, YOU IDIOT! IT WAS A BOOK!! I EVEN TOLD YOU THAT IT WAS 'DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE'!"

Axel, Roxas and Rikku '...'ed.

That was when they knew that the next 25 minutes they were going to have were going to be the _worst_ they'd have for... Oh, shall we say 'quite-a-while'.

●◦●_----------------------Oo_

To placate Lexaeus (and to stop him charging about the house screaming about Lilo and Stitch) Vexen had grounded him, confining him to Saix's room. Why he had sent him to Saix's room nobody knew, considering that Lexaeus already had a rather nice, fully-functioning room.

Well, the room wasn't really fully-functioning as last night Lexaeus had been messing around with his punch-bag and had managed to miss by miles. And, of course, he ended up with his arm stuck through eight inches of Styrofoam, bubble wrap, insulating material, water pipe and wooden PCB board.

To put this sentence in a way for a normal person to understand (a person who doesn't live in a run-down tin-can with about 1,000 other residents, most of whom have to sleep in cupboards due to lack of space) Lexaeus had managed to smash his fist through his bedroom wall.

And the bedroom had actually flooded, rotting the floorboards and carrying all the furniture out of the window in a deft tidal wave.

The point was, nobody cared any more. Odd things were a daily occurrence in their house. And if bizarre, out-of-this-world happenings take place every second of every day, you soon grow apathetic to them and learn to ignore them.

Why, if Xigbar met a fire-breathing lizard whilst he was eating his cornflakes (which he had done many-a-time, ever since Axel acquired Mushu the mad pyromaniac lizard) he would simply laugh and shrug a bit, and maybe try to shoot it. And if Cloud used Stigma soap (Vexen's new invention) to wash his hands after going to the potty and it made his skin turn green and fall off, then he simply turned the other cheek. And if Xaldin harpooned a chicken to the wall with one of his 'wind' lances, Tifa would merely tut, pull the chicken and the lance out of the wall, and maybe make a turkey instead.

The point is, so many weird things happened in their house that nobody cared any more.

And so nobody bothered to call for a plumber to fix Lexaeus's room, and just left it in the state it was in.

And they were all very happy to say Lexaeus's looked as good as it did before, hole or no hole, broken water pipe or no broken water paper, furniture or no furniture.

And so that, my children, was why Vexen had locked Lexaeus up in Saix's room, and that was why an awful lot of shouting could be heard drifting from upstairs.

"Maybe Lexaeus mistook Saix for his punch bag and hit a hole through _him_," suggested Roxas.

"Nah, I think they're just playing charades again," said Axel with a shrug, as he sat on the sofa, clicking his tongue, letting the screams of '_BITCH!_' and '_IT'S MY TURN!_' and '_FOR THE LOVE OF KINGDOM HEARTS!_' wash over him like a 'pleasant' tidal wave.

Much like the tidal wave that cleared Lexaeus's room of furniture.

"Charades?" asked Rikku, her voice sounding a little uncertain. She'd only lived at the abode of the damned for two days whilst Meg sorted out their housing, and hadn't grown accustomed to Axel's family and their weird ways yet. "It sounds more like they're playing murder in the dark... Literally..."

"Yeah. They're a bit noisy. Pay no heed to them," said Axel, with a shrug.

"Xemnas!" cried Saix, sounding oddly like wounded animal. "Is dinner ready yet?!" It was Xemnas turn to cook dinner, which meant Tifa was on stand-by with some ready-made sandwiches, because nobody really wanted to eat nothing.

"Yes!" called Xemnas from the kitchen, adding the finishing touches to his nothing ala nothing.

"So I can finally end this charade?!"

"Yes!"

"How I've waited to hear that!"

"Yes!"

Rikku rolled her eyes.

"_SAIX! I THINK I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE NOW! ARE YOU WINNIE THE POOH?!"_ Lexaeus shouted.

"NO! I ALREADY TOLD YOU, I'M THE GRIM REAPER! GOT IT?!"

"...No... Not really..."

Axel shrugged, feeling happy that the two misfits of the family could find such great fun in tormenting the living daylights out of each other. Ah, it was true friendship, at its highest.

"Come on, let's go to dinner... It's your last meal here," he said, throwing his arms akimbo, attempting to be dramatic. "It'll probably be peanut butter sandwiches or something, cause Xemnas is cooking and Xemnas can't cook so Tifa gives us sandwiches as a healthy alternative to nothing... But, er, that's okay, right?"

"Of course it's okay. Hercules can't cook either. I remember when he tried to make Christmas dinner..." said Rikku with a giggle, remembering her father hacking at the turkey with a chainsaw.

It would be fitting to say the family members weren't amused, but really most of them found it funny. And Aunt Maleficent came away with a new hat – a piece of renegade turkey.

"Happy memories..." Rikku finished, looking vaguely starry-eyed, as she walked into the kitchen.

Roxas, Axel and Rikku sat down in any random place around the table, fitting in amongst the rest of the family members who were already there.

Xemnas emerged from the kitchen, with several plates stacked up in his arms. He walked around the circular table, plunking down the empty plates, all the while telling everybody to 'eat up' and 'enjoy'. He finally put down the last blue-patterned plate and sat down at his place on the table, with a large smile on his face.

"Everybody, dig in! There's plenty more if anybody would like seconds!"

Tifa took this happy statement as her cue, as she scampered out from the kitchen with another plate in her hands, full of sandwiches. She distributed this cheap form of nutrition bunged between slices of white bread leisurely, and pretty soon all the plates were full and Xemnas looked rather displeased, and everybody was tucking in.

"For you see, darkness is the heart's _true_ essence," Ansem randomly stated, as he prodded the specially made 'darkness' sarnie Tifa had given him.

"But, my old boy, nothingness is superior to darkness! It cannot die! It is everlasting!" retorted Xemnas, taking a thoughtful bite out of his nothingness sandwich – it was just two slices of nothing, with no filling, just how he liked it. How he managed to stay alive on this meagre diet, nobody knew. He just ... did...

"I think hearts are good," said Xehanort, prodding at his food.

"Stab..." said Xaldin, stabbing at his sandwich over and over again with his knife.

Rikku smiled at all the freaks assembled around the table, and felt a sudden warm rush of love for all of them, as she bit into her sandwich.

It was just such a _cool_ house.

**BRRRRIIIIIINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!**

"That'll be death," said Ansem darkly.

"That'll be your mother," smiled Tifa, choosing to ignore Ansem, stuffing the last bit of cheese sandwich in her mouth. "I'll just go get the door..."

"If she doesn't come back..." Ansem trailed off, as he bit into his darkness sandwich. "Call the Powerangers..."

"No, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They rule..." countered Xigbar.

"I am under the impression Tifa is not dead... Yet..." growled Xehanort, as Tifa walked back into the kitchen with a pretty, curvy woman in tow.

"But she has death _with_ her," said Ansem darkly.

"That's my mother..." replied Roxas, a quizzical look on his face. He, unlike Rikku, was not thinking how cool the family was – he was thinking how weird they were...

"Your mother's _death_?" inquired Xigbar with a raised eyebrow.

"Stab stab," mumbled Xaldin happily, lost in the happy word of stabbing sandwiches with knives.

Tifa lent over to tell him to stop playing with his food, but as Xaldin looked pretty pissed off at life in general and had an eating implement of doom, she decided against it. He had, after all, glared up at her with a purple face, veins throbbing, spittle running down his chin, knife aloft. And if that wasn't a clue to keep away, the fact he was muttering '_die, bitch..._' sure was.

Tifa started to wonder who the hell Xaldin was and why he was in her house in the first place, but she thought better than to ask him. If the nice maniac wanted to live in her house, then live in her house he could...

Whilst he had the knife, he was invincible...

But wait, hadn't Vexen melted all the knives earlier in a experiment? She was sure he had, because that was why Cloud had a bandage on his arm – because he had been using his sword to cut bread.

Meh, it was probably a plot hole of some sort...

Everything usually was.

**Two girls in back of kitchen**: She's on to us... Quick, run...

Tifa blinked, sure that two girls who bore resemblances to the fanfenfictioners 'Skitts' and 'Lamatikah'.

She shuddered, deciding she was going senile. Maybe living with Xaldin really did knock several points of your IQ...

**Lamatikah**: That's right, you believe that...

**Skitts**: Heh... BELIEVE IT GOOD!

"Anyway..." said Meg, a stretched smile on her face, taking in the scene of absolute horror that was spread out before her, like a gruesome picture. She was sure this is what hell was like... "I've got a kid in the back of the car, so can we go ... Quickly?"

Roxas was sure she only tacked the quickly on as soon as she got a clearer look at Xaldin, who had managed to harpoon his sandwich to his plate, and managed to harpoon is plate to the table.

Rikku finished her sandwich, and smiled at everybody. "Well, I guess we have to go..." She giggled in a weird little way when she looked at Axel. "Bye, Axel..."

The goodbyes and pleasantries were exchanged rather hurriedly, as Meg seemed hell-bent on leaving the dining room. And quickly. While they still had a chance at survival.

They wouldn't last long there...

Tifa smiled placidly, as the door slammed and the sound of a car driving away at 100 mph met her ears.

"Wait, where's Saïx?"

"And Lexaeus?"

●◦●_----------------------Xx_

**A/N:** _Hehe..._


End file.
